An Affair or Something
by College Fool
Summary: Let me tell you a tale of a story never written- where Jaune Rose tended a beautiful garden he loved and resented, when Ruby Rose had her Fairy Tale Marriage that wasn't quite Happily Ever After, and in which Pyrrha Nikos was the spark that threatened to set it all ablaze by sharing a drink called loneliness. Complete.
1. Arc 1

Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY.

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Author Notes:

This is the one chapter that the author notes are up front. Here's why- it's important to understand what you're getting into.

This is a story that isn't your typical read. Or rather, this is a narrative- an overview that will tell a tale of how I would tell a tale, without the usual prose of actually telling it.

In less pretentious words, this is a 16,000 word overview for a fic that I will never write. Why? Because even though I'll never write it, the story is worth sharing. This is the planning outline I referred to in 'A Common Criminal or Something,' now out for all to see. It will be a post-a-day, but divided around narrative arcs rather than chapters. Similar reasons apply- even though it's a summary, the design of the story is such that the flow is meant to be taken in over time.

Make no mistake, this may not be prose but it _**is** _ a story- it is an account of imaginary people and events told for entertainment. It will have no dialogue. It has no fight sequences. Its style is beyond minimalist- it is a narrative that exists to make you imagine the events yourself in your own mind's eye. This is a work to convey an idea. But most of all, this is actually here. The alternative to this style isn't 'a full-fleshed story with better writing.' The alternative would be nothing.

In short- this is 'College Fool's sharing the idea of a story' in the same sense that Renegade Reinterpretations was 'College Fool's sharing the idea of a video game.' People enjoyed that- and I suspect people will enjoy this, even if it's definitely not the norm.

Accept these limitations if you're willing. Or don't, and leave now.

But for those who would, venture forward and see the creation of my thoughts in your own mind's eye…

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"An Affair Or Something"

The Summary:

Jaune Rose had what should have been the fairy tale happy ending: married to a wonderful wife and amazing Huntress, raising two talented children who take after their mother, and a well-paying job as an administrator at Signal Academy. So why isn't he happy? When Jaune shares a drink called loneliness with a red-haired woman at a bar, their initial spark threatens to set his ideal life aflame... and that thought doesn't frighten him as much as it should.

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The Story:

Jaune Arc never went to Beacon, but still crossed paths with heroes. Rescued time and time again by Ruby Rose, their frequent encounters became a friendship that became something more. The day was saved, the White Fang was stopped, and Jaune Arc became Jaune Rose the day Ruby graduated Beacon as a full fledged Huntress. It was a rescue romance that ended happily ever after, and the story begins on their wedding day- in which Jaune is the luckiest man alive, he and Ruby have enough roses to start a beautiful Rose Garden that he promises to keep for her, much to her delight, and where Ruby and Jaune Rose enter their new home for Ruby's very own Happily Ever After.

Fifteen years later, Jaune is still living that happy ending. His (still beautiful) wife is both successful and loves him. He's raised talented children who will surely be great Heroes like their mother. He does a diligent job doing the necessary work that keeps Signal Academy running. He's even on good terms with nearly all Ruby's friends. The most dangerous part of his life is being pricked by the thorns of the Rose Garden, the beautiful private garden he keeps for his wife and promised to care for. It has a perfect view of the sky at night, when moon looks down upon the countless roses that populate it.

And he's never been more miserable. So let's try that again.

Fifteen years later, Jaune is suffocating and wondering where his happy ending is supposed to be. His wife is away for months at a time with men better than him in every way. He can't relate with the children, young fighters who don't take after him at all and seem to prefer any man with a semblance over him. He's nothing but a petty bureaucrat doing the thankless and endless task of pushing papers. He has no friends of his own, only his wife's friends who humor or put up with him. The only success he has to be proud of is the Rose Garden, but it's something almost no one else ever sees, and he's not truly the master of even that because Ruby made him promise to only have roses in no matter the thorns, because he fails to grow anything else. The garden is almost impossible to see in the dark of night unless the moon is directly overhead, because high walls and the city lights blocks out all the stars he hasn't seen since childhood.

Jaune, not even forty, is entering a mid-life crisis born of frustration, failed dreams, isolation, and a lack of (self)respect. And the only thing he can do is drink alone at the bar, occasionally telling some stranger his woes until they tell him to get over himself he has it so good.

Ruby, lovely and wonderful and well-intentioned as she is, is often away, and tries to make up for it when she's not. Which should be fine, it's just her way of showing love, except Jaune's pretty sure he's not just imagining that her fellow Hunter and frequent mission partner, Cardin Winchester, is being more than friendly. There's also the matter of the children, who don't seem to take anything after him except for taking him for granted, and are more interested in chasing after their dreams of being heroes and following anyone with an aura than they care to spend time with him. It's been years since they wanted to be seen in public with him, and now that they're at Signal they do their best to pretend they don't know him. And being a paper-pusher at Signal is hardly the sort of helpful work he wanted to do with his life... especially when everyone knows the reason he got the job is because of nepotism and Uncle Qrow pulling strings. He can't even tell it to any of his friends, because they're really Ruby's friends, and the ones who don't think he has anything to complain about go and take it directly to Ruby. Which leads to her trying to fix it for him with more coddling, which makes it worse even as he knows he should be grateful. The more Ruby helps, the less it does and the more he wants to scream. All he can do, except drink, is tend the Rose Garden- which Ruby watches but never interferes, and never lets the children interfere either.

It's one more night he's telling his story in a bar. It's one more night he can't understand why he's not happy with life, why he can't appreciate how good he has it. It's one more night, and he fully expects to be blown off. It's one more night like the rest… until he meets a beautiful red-haired woman who's also drinking alone, and who tells him she understands.

One night at a bar he meets (without recognizing) Pyrrha Nikos, lovely and living the dream of success and loneliness herself, all the more so because her two best friends are getting married. It should be a happy occasion, but she feels like she's being left behind, and hasn't been able to escape the shadow of her career for years. She has the money, the accomplishments, the success, the admiration of all- but she hasn't had a new friend in over a decade, or a relationship in longer, because the only people who dare are louts out for her fame or fortune. She's been type-cast into her profession, expected to stick with what she's good at forever, with no one to share her private interests with. She's the first to understand what he's feeling, about being trapped in greener pastures, and in turn he's the first to understand her.

Sharing a drink called loneliness, the two bond over how life isn't like what they dreamed a happy ending would be. They hit it off, one drink becomes two, two becomes too many, and when Jaune wakes up the next morning it's in her apartment and in her bed. His clothes are still on- nothing happened- but something did. Jaune cooks Pyrrha breakfast as thanks for his sob-session the previous night, even as she does the same. Before he leaves the two agree to meet up again. Jaune waves off raised eyebrows when he returns home, claiming he crashed with some a friend after too much to drink at the bar, and looks forward to meeting Pyrrha again for drinks. Ruby doesn't question him, but then she doesn't question him about his new friend either. Instead she chides him for his drinking habit, even as his children laugh and make light of him as a drunkard, and already Jaune has the urge for a beer.

'Just for drinks' becomes more as the two become closer- and as Pyrrha begins to help Jaune get a handle on his own life. Shared misery becomes encouragement on how he can turn his life around- the sort of advice of 'tell your family what's on your mind' and such. It starts with a shared shoulder, and then a suggestion of building a healthy sweat with her inviting him to the gym she's at, and then to be a student of the self-defense class she runs.

When Jaune one night admits his childhood dream of being a Hunter, a dream he was forced to give up long ago and which Ruby has refused to unlock his aura for fear he'd get himself in danger, Pyrrha does it instead in another evening of light drinking at her place. There's nothing sexual about it- he hardly sleeps in her bed on anything- but the night she unlocks his aura, she's so tired that she ends up falling asleep on the couch with him, asking him to wake her in the morning. He gives her his word, and spends the night with her- this time by choice.

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Author Notes: End Arc 1. Key points: establishing the foundation of Jaune's discontent, the start of his time with Pyrrha, and the initial tenor of Jaune's relationships.


	2. Arc 2

Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY.

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Jaune's relationship with Pyrrha approaches a delicate line even if it remains platonic, but even as Jaune tries to make things better on the home front, they get worse.

Despite not coming home the previous night at all, and coming home Friday from a drinking/planning night with Pyrrha, Ruby doesn't show any concern, or interest in his good mood, or even acknowledge his friendship with Pyrrha. In contrast to a pleasant and fond morning wakeup with Pyrrha after their couch sleepover, Jaune's return to Ruby isn't a fight, but Ruby responds to his white lie about having too much to drink and crashing at a friend's place by making clear she disapproves of his drinking habits. It's not the best start to the weekend, but Jaune still intends to go forward with what his plans (with Pyrrha's support) to rediscover happiness on the home front.

That Saturday he tries to take Ruby on a date, to re-spark the romance of their courting years, but his efforts to treat her are undercut from the start when she insists on treating him to everything. After their date is cut short with Ruby having to rescue him from some minor threat he probably could have dealt with himself, and then leave him in order to resolve it even though it wasn't that important, the good mood is ruined... all the more when Jaune tries to let her know about his concerns. He tries to let Ruby know he's worried about Cardin and the long away-missions she's been having more and more of lately- but she blows his concerns off, trusting adult!Hunter!Cardin and arguing that as a Hero the world needs her out there more than he needs her here. Besides, her next mission next weekend is only going to be for a week- far shorter than past missions.

The next day, Sunday, Jaune tries to take the kids out for some family time with the promise of a surprise. The kids are surprised at his aura- but rather than be impressed, they remember how their mothers had hers unlocked way long ago. They still measure him against infinitely better and life-long Hunters, and aren't exactly shy about pointing out how even they're better than him. Like their mother, they say he should leave the fighting to them. They soon ditch him for something more impressive and Hunter related, leaving him in the dust and left to answer Ruby's upset concern about why he has aura, something that he should never need. The next Monday Jaune tries to assert himself at the school when some students stoop to bullying an outsider- until the students gang up on him and stick him in a tree in an example of the difference between empowered children and civilians like himself. To rub salt in the wound, his own children stand by and watch without interfering even as he's humiliated by bullies less than half his age.

Jaune's efforts to turn things around on the home front are less than successful, much to his frustration. Yet the worse things get with the family, the closer Jaune and Pyrrha get- first by phone-calls over the weekend as he reports the results and she gives encouragement to keep trying, but back to the bar by the next week. Pyrrha listens and realizes what he's trying to do by (re)connecting with his family, Pyrrha offers support as he tries to find happiness within his life, but most of all Pyrrha has faith in him and empowers him to be who he wants to be: giving him time and attention and faith to change and be someone who can do things himself. She helps him with ideas, lets him try, and empathizes with his failures without suggesting he stop. Pyrrha offers to help, but never to do things for him, and most importantly Pyrrha encourages him to do things himself, even after he's failed. She won't even give him autographs as a bribe-present for the kids... and oddly, that makes him appreciate her more. Jaune finds himself looking more and more forward to seeing Pyrrha, and less and less about being home- and even if he doesn't realize it, Pyrrha wants more of him as well, going from wanting to hear about his results to looking forward to their next evening out.

Meanwhile his relationship with Ruby is struggling. Friday ended with a scolding over drinking, and their Saturday date ended on a sour note, but Ruby and Jaune have a minor tiff on Sunday after Ruby learns from the kids that his aura is unlocked. Ruby never unlocked his aura- never wanted it unlocked- because Jaune should have no need for it. There's nothing in Jaune's life as a father and administrator that would warrant it. Ruby has strong views about this, views born from past experience, and doesn't want Jaune getting himself into trouble that inevitably follows aura-users. The last thing she wants is for Jaune to try and be a hero. No, really- this late in his life he'd never be able to be a good one, not like if he'd been trained from youth. Aura or no, he's still untrained and inexperienced, his potential squandered by age, and he'd only get himself in worse trouble if he tried to oppose anyone who knew what they were doing. Ruby's seen too many people get themselves hurt, or worse, because they feel empowered by aura alone. Besides, Ruby would finish, even if he ever does find himself in trouble, she'd still be more than happy to rescue him once again- just like in their romance rescue years.

Ruby means well, which is why this is a minor tiff and not a fight, but Ruby's attempt to end on a positive note falls short when Jaune doesn't respond to her playful and even flirtatious tone, but goes to bed instead... even as Monday apparently vindicates her and proves her right, with her words echoing when Jaune is stuck in the tree. She doesn't say 'I told you so'- but then, she doesn't need to. Instead she tries to make things better, much as Jaune had.

The next few days entail Ruby trying to fix things for Jaune before an away-mission at the end of the week. Her response to the students is to more or less beat them up in a mock battle at Signal, a demonstration of her ability, and then threaten to withhold her lessons/presence if they give Jaune trouble- and they don't, but it's clearly because of her, not him. She scolds her children for standing by when Jaune was bullied, telling them they should make it up to him, and they are properly contrite when their mother scolds them, unlike him. And as for Cardin... well, adult!Hunter!Cardin has come a long way from what he used to be, and Ruby stands by and believes in Cardin (who she's fought beside and owes her life to) over Jaune (who she thinks is just jealous).

She's correct, but not necessarily right.

Thursday is the night of the away-party, right before she's to go, and Ruby's been looking forward to it for (among other things) being the first complete Team RWBY reunion for awhile. Though Yang is a frequent visitor, and Blake not uncommon, Weiss rarely escapes her role as the head of Schnee Dust Corp unless there's an emergency. Jaune's relationship with them varies- warm with sister-in-law Yang, friendly encough with Blake, while cool (but cordial) with Weiss- but after some small-talk with Blake and Yang reveals that Ruby's partner for this upcoming mission won't be Team RWBY, but Cardin Winchester, Jaune leaves Team RWBY to catch up amongst itself after Blake and Yang start asking about the kids.

Remembering Pyrrha's advice on not hiding what he thinks, but taking her up on it at the worst possible time, Jaune decides to confront Cardin about being too close to his wife. After taking a few drinks for courage. On top of what he'd already drunk earlier in the night.

Cardin dismisses him, and the more he does the more confrontational Jaune gets- to the point of drunkenly trying to pick a fight. Cardin, no longer a bully who picks on those weaker than him, straight up tells Jaune that while he can't see why Ruby cares for him, he can see why she wouldn't respect him- because there's not much to respect. Jaune has achieved nothing, proven nothing, has nothing to be proud of except a Rose Garden that Ruby claims to have but no one else has ever seen. Even if Jaune was right, so what? Jaune couldn't do anything even if someone did make a move on his wife. Cardin denies he's ever made a move on Ruby… while more or less admitting that while he wouldn't start something, he'd be up for a roll in the hay whenever Ruby ever wanted wanted a real man.

Jaune ends the night publicly humiliated, with his (Ruby's) friends ashamed to be associated with him, and even Ruby is upset that the night was ruined. Ruby shames Jaune about his conduct, about his drinking habits, calls insecurities baseless, and most of all about how he's making yet another problem for her to fix. Ruby has Yang take Jaune home, not even doing it herself, and tells him to just stick to what he's good at and tend to the Rose Garden- which, she testily reminds him, he's been neglecting it for his recent drinking sessions. The last Jaune sees of Ruby is her walking away from him and towards Cardin to try and smooth things over.

Cardin, looking over her shoulder, sees him off with a damn smile.

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Author Notes: End Arc 2. Key points: Jaune's good-faith attempt to connect with his family, the inverted progress as he grows closer to Pyrrha despite failing with his family, and the beginning of isolation and severe negative low as Ruby leaves with Cardin for a week-long mission.

One of the goals of this story was to have a far more concrete timeline and control of pacing than existed in Common Criminal. What this would have meant in practice was that chapters would more or less been posted in corresponding calendar days, even corresponding times of day- so that the posting process would correspond to the pacing of in-story events.

Case in point- this section would have covered a week in posting time, starting on a Friday real-world. Friday in-setting would have had both the morning-after scene for sleeping on the couch, and an evening drinking followed by a Ruby encounter. That might have been two separate updates: one in the early morning, in which Jaune and Pyrrha bond after she wakes up, and one in the evening, when Jaune returns home to Ruby in a good mood, subtly offering her a chance to ask about his plans (and Pyrrha), which she wouldn't in lieu of chiding him over drinking. Saturday and Sunday would be Jaune trying to address things with his family and get closer, but falling flat. Monday would be the school, and Jaune ending up at the bar with Pyrrha. Tuesday's chapter would have continued that, with Pyrrha encouraging Jaune to keep trying despite his failure. Tuesday/Wednesday would have been just that- with Ruby swooping in trying to fix the problems she could (while rejecting that there is any problem with Cardin), with Wednesday's chapter ending with the preparations for Thursday's fare-well party. Thursday, both in real life and in the setting, would have been the night of the ball and Jaune's humiliation, setting the stage for Jaune's Firday that begins the next arc.

And so on. This concept was an evolution of the post-a-day style of Common Criminal. It wouldn't differ much in Arc 1- a post-a-day covering the vague time span of the start of Jaune and Pyrrha's encounters- but as the story picked up its stride it would have had a feeling of being in real-time, to the point of multiple posts a day for story sections that had multiple chapters on a single day in-story- and on those multi-chapter days, even the timing of the updates would have been scheduled to more-or-less correspond with the story. Most updates, like those with bar scenes, would have been posted early-evening, not early morning.

If it worked in practice like it does in my head, the effect for the readers following it during the posting phase would have been the sense of following The Affair or Something in pseudo-real time. Rather than 'what's my morning update have today,' it would have been 'what's the latest in the state of Jaune's marriage?,' or even 'what's happening now?' Instead of being a reader with a time disconnect, you'd feel like an observer of events going on parallel to you... all to get a better sense that An Affair or Something really was unfolding over the same span of weeks that the posting phase would have lasted.

Of course, that wouldn't help as much for people with limited access to check for updates. And it'd depend on me being able to consistently post based on time. And there was one arc which would be a major exception and might break the pattern. But it's an ambition.


	3. Arc 3

Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY.

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Thursday and the party were just the start of a bad cycle of bad to worse when Jaune wakes up Friday to an empty house.

Ruby is gone before he wakes up next morning- leaving on a Friday on that mission to Atlas with Cardin Winchester that will keep her out of town for two weekends. The kids, without telling or asking him, forged his signature for permission slips and stole his credit cards so that they could sneak away on a cool trip to go who knows where for a week, leaving behind a letter trusting him to cover it with Signal teachers- who are less than pleased that he can't even be a father and keep his own children in line. To rub salt in the wounds, Ruby has asked her friends to look after Jaune and keep him from going straight to the bar after work and on the weekend- which means Yang and Blake literally walk him home from school like a truant, enforce a curfew, and then leave him at home for a weekend, warning that they'll be keeping watch between their own local Huntress investigations. Between Ruby's request and Jaune's protests, there's no question whose side they're on.

So Jaune is alone at home. A beautiful, empty, and incredibly lonely home that isn't even his, because it's all in the Rose name with Ruby's money on Ruby's success. The only thing he can do, the only thing he has to do besides drink, is tend the Rose Garden- the private garden in the center of their home. It's beautiful, with countless hours of care and attention- but it only has roses, because Jaune is somehow incapable of growing anything else. He used to try other things- used to try anything since it was his garden to manage- but after so many failures Ruby issued her One Rule of the Garden. Though he controls everything else about it, Jaune Rose is only allowed to grow roses in the Rose Garden, because he can't raise any other seed. But at least his roses actually respond to him, even if they're occasionally late bloomers.

Not that he's in a mind to appreciate the beauty now. The first night in the Rose Garden, Jaune drinks alone, bitter and resentful. Resents that Yang is keeping him cooped at home, even though there's as much alcohol as any bar. Resents Weiss when he finds that there isn't, because Ruby no doubt asked her to ship out the alcohol collection he's collected from his paycheck. Resents that Blake is no doubt watching the place for any prison break, as if he were going to climb the walls. Resents that the Rose Garden walls are too high anyway, so high that it's hard to keep the roses from wilting for lack of sun. Resents that Ruby loves it all anyway, even though it only looks beautiful during the day because you can't see it at all most nights for a lack of stars or even the moon because of the walls and lights of the city drowning everything out.

The second night, having spent all day cooped up at home except for the time in the Rose Garden, Jaune is angry and lashes out at anyone around- but he's the only one around to be seen. He hates what he sees (a failure of a man), has done (no accomplishments worth respecting), and is doing (drinking alone after being abandoned by family). Frustrated beyond all reason, hating how unhappy he looks, hating what he sees, Jaune throws the last bottle of beer at the image of himself in the mirror of his and Ruby's bathroom, shattering it.

And the third day- when he hasn't had anything to drink all day but desperately needs one, when he's so mad that he's drunk on rage and so angry that he can't stand it anymore, he can't stand this home-life he's trapped in, he begins to tear apart the Rose Garden with his bare hands. The more he tears the more the thorns bleed and hurt, the more it hurts the more he tears, which hurts more which makes him madder, so much that he just wants it all to end and stop hurting and burn the damn thing to the ground-

On Sunday night, Pyrrha Nikos opens the door and enters the Rose Garden before Jaune can do something he won't live to regret, and knocks the metal lighter out of his hand.

Jaune is shocked and surprised to see her there. She's never been here before. He's never even told her about the garden before. But she's here because she's worried. He hasn't been to the bar- and even she's heard about the party- and she's concerned about him. Jaune thinks its pity, and if there's one thing he won't stoop to its accepting pity, and on the third night Jaune takes his anger and frustration and everything out on her. Pyrrha weathers it, until Jaune ranting turns to self-loathing, at which point she slaps him.

Pointing out the things he's tried to do, how he's tried to make things better, Pyrrha argues that it's not his fault he's not happy with life. That he's not solely responsible for his state of affairs, and that not being content with misery doesn't make him a bad person. Even if it did- even if he was- she'd still care. Even if no one else in the world respects him for what he's accomplished, she does because of what he's tried to do. Admires the fact that he wants to do them himself at all. And if there's one thing he should be proud of- it's what he's created with this garden. Even if the only thing he's ever been able to raise were roses, the time, dedication, and attention that went into something so beautiful is still worth respecting. He should be proud- and if there's anything for him to be ashamed of, it's that he just tried to destroy it.

The third night ends with Jaune breaking down and crying in Pyrrha's arms. When Pyrrha helps him clean up and tries to put him away in his and Ruby's bed, he can't stand it- can't stand it being empty and alone- and begs her to stay the night. She does, and they fall asleep in embracing in Ruby's bed.

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Author Notes: End Arc 3. Key points: the downward spiral and emotional low point for Jaune, who goes from bad to worse after the events of the Party and as his life fascade. Isolation from the not-friends and family, contrasting with the start of (emotional) intimacy with Pyrrha.

With the lead-up of the first two arcs (and two weeks of posting time), it should be apparent that Jaune's breakdown isn't a sudden thing of just the last few days- it's been a long time coming. Jaune's been unhappy for some time, his attempts to fix it have failed, and these last few days are the straw that broke the camel's back.

Chronologically this the shortest arc at three days, with two chapters for each. Friday is the wake-up and discovery of the empty house, followed by the curfew/first night of drinking. Saturday is the reflections on the Rose Garden, and the second night's break-down. Sunday is Jaune's breakdown in two parts, in isolation and with Pyrrha.


	4. Arc 4

Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY.

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Monday morning starts with Jaune waking up alone and instantly lonely- but finding Pyrrha cooking breakfast, wearing an embarrassing 'Kiss the Cook' apron that Ruby once got for him and that he would have worn earlier in the story for the kids. The children wouldn't, so Jaune does- giving Pyrrha a peck on the cheek and thanking her for helping him through last night. Pyrrha was happy she could help, and the discussion turns towards what Jaune intends to do next. Jaune doesn't want to go to work, wishes they could just play hooky for the day, but Pyrrha urges him to do so anyway- to keep moving forward and make the best of the life he has. Jaune regrets that they can't meet up at the bar due to WBY's meddling, but Pyrrha brings up that there are other ways they could meet up- and other places that they could drink. It's not-quite framed in terms of wanting to keep an eye on him after yesterday's near disaster, but Pyrrha's interest in spending time together is clear… and Jaune is looking forward to it just as much.

Starting that Monday and for the rest of the work week, Jaune has a fresh attitude and finally makes progress pushing back at life.

On Monday, when Blake is there to shadow him back home to make sure he doesn't go to the bar, he defies her by going to Pyrrha's gym instead. Blake is torn, since Ruby's request was that he go straight home, but Jaune presses back by arguing he's not violating the spirit of his word because he's doing something other than going to the bar. After she's gone, he and Pyrrha share a cheer… and then, after the workout, leave to go have a few glasses of wine at her place. Not having anyone or anything to return to back home, Jaune gratefully accepts Pyrrha's offer to stay for the night... and falls asleep on Pyrrha's couch.

On Tuesday, when some of the antagonistic teachers at Signal give him grief for the skipping children and his irresponsibility, Jaune hits back with the sort of paperwork and issues he's had to do all this time: damage reports and complaints of unruly students and so on, an indictment of the teacher's own ability to encourage or enforce responsibility on unwilling children. Jaune makes his case using some quote of Pyrrha's, and verbal authority of Remnant's most famous instructor (who Jaune didn't realize she was) wins the argument. When Jaune shares his amazement that Pyrrha is, like, amazing, Pyrrha laughs and flushes and the two bump foreheads. Jaune asks if he's making her lose money by turning away better customers, but Pyrrha dismisses it by saying the privilege of being self-employed and free is getting to choose the people you want to be with. Once again, Jaune stays the night- waving off Pyrrha's concern that the couch might be too uncomfortable.

On Wednesday, as he goes over the mounting travel expenses the children have garnered, including a number of cash withdrawals, Jaune decides to deduct the money they've withdrawn or spent on frivolous expenses from their personal savings. This gets a quick response that very evening, when Pyrrha and Jaune are spending time at her apartment, when the kids call to complain at how unfair it is that he's taking their personal savings. Jaune successfully puts the foot down now that they can't use the cute faces they inherited from Ruby, calling them out on the frivolous purchases, and chastises them for leaving without permission. When they claim that they're in Atlas because it's a matter of family, Jaune falls silent… and (a slightly tipsy) Pyrrha takes the phone on a whim and a funny idea. Introducing herself as the, you know, the world's most successful Champion and professional trainer, she laments that it's such a shame they left. After all, she's friends with Jaune, and he's said so much about them, she'd really been looking forward to meeting them… The kids can't believe it, until they do, and Pyrrha hangs up on them laughing with Jaune as the children light up the phone. This time when Jaune goes to sleep, Pyrrha brings out her bed covers, claiming it's a bit warm so she'll be fine with just the sheets. Jaune agrees that it's a bit hot- and not just the temperature, but he's too tired to care, though not too tired to notice Pyrrha's evening attire.

On Thursday, Jaune and Pyrrha talk history and family. Jaune, in a good mood, talks about how he used to be an Arc, and his wistful childhood dream of fighting Grimm and helping people. In return, Pyrrha opens up about her own past- not just as a trainer, but Champion and the success and all the loneliness that was brought with it. Both are both proud and wistful of their own pasts- but also impressed and interested in the other. Pyrrha makes Jaune promise to tell her more about the Arcs, even as Jaune makes Pyrrha promise to show her the videos of her Championship matches. They agree to do so over the weekend. That night, Pyrrha tucks Jaune in a sweet gesture… but later, after Jaune is asleep, gives him a goodnight kiss on the head. Jaune, not so asleep after all, thinks again that it's sweet… but he doesn't get to sleep for some time afterwards.

On Friday, Jaune goes straight home after school (much to Yang and Blake's surprise, and relief) so that he can gather some of the Arc mementos to show Pyrrha, including the heirloom Crocea Mors that he's never given to the children. When he steps out the door, he finds a car waiting- Pyrrha's, and she has a surprise offer. They could go to her apartment for drinks and review- or, if he trusts her, he could let her show him something that she's never shown anyone else before. Jaune does trust her, and agrees to go along with her idea- and it's not until they're outside the Vale limits that she tells him she intends to show him something that only Hunters see: a star-filled sky away from the cities. Driving/flying far away before making camp, Jaune sees the first night sky without the City's light pollution that he's seen in… since before he was married.

Seeing the stars of the night sky is a tender scene, beautiful and awe-inspiring for Jaune who's lived in the city for so long that he hasn't seen the stars since he was a child. Looking at the constellations- the Hero, the Huntress, the Lovers, he briefly wonders if Ruby sees this every day she's away, and wonders if she might even now be looking up at the same stars thinking of him… even as he remembers it was Pyrrha, not Ruby, who showed him this. Pyrrha is watching him watch the stars, smiling and beautiful and close and is it him or she who is leaning in? For the first time Jaune is flustered by their closeness. Making a hasty excuse he tries to end the awkward moment to by going to bed- only to realize that he and Pyrrha are going to be in a two-person tent, sleeping so close together that they might as well be sleeping tog-

Jaune ends the night a bundle of nerves.

On Saturday morning, Jaune wakes up still nervous and wondering what's next. The answer is- keeping his word as the two enjoy a lazy camping experience, complete with fishing for lunch (Jaune catches the bigger fish, much to his pride). Pyrrha brought the videos of her championship to watch with Jaune, which awes him even as he wants Pyrrha to show him her moves. Jaune tells the tales of his family and sisters, who Pyrrha actually knows one or two of and compliments the Arc family, much to Jaune's pride. Despite the easy atmosphere, Jaune picks up that Pyrrha is a bit nervous, thinks it's lingering awkwardness from last night, and tries to make light of it and ask what she has planned for the evening before the stars come out. Pyrrha plays along, a bit coy, and suggests they play of an innocent game of Hunters and Grimm. The way she says it is anything but.

The next chapter, of the preparation for the 'game,' is sizzling with sexual tension. Pyrrha dresses in her old Huntress uniform- and Jaune is suitably dazzled. The seductive undertones are obvious, even as the two trade words that are superficially innocent. Jaune isn't sure he can play Hunter, he doesn't have the training and hasn't had much practice with the family sword over the last many years (what with Ruby gone so often). Pyrrha says that's okay, she can show him what Ruby wasn't around to- or, if he prefers, he could be the Grimm, and she'll hunt him. Jaune is a bit nervous about his first time (in a sparring match). Pyrrha says that she's sure he'll do fine, after all she's an excellent hands-on instructor. Obvious sexual tension in everything, with Pyrrha disappearing into the woods after promising to hunt him down and take him (not down- simply take him).

Saturday afternoon of the game is tense, and not just in terms of hide-and-seek. Jaune's adrenaline is pumping and he's not at all ignorant about the subtext- and not sure of how he should feel either. He's married, even if not happily. But with Pyrrha right now, he's more than happy- he feels energized, alive, optimistic. They're doing something, doing things, that Ruby would never do _with_ him despite all the things she'd do _for_ him- not risk the wilds to see the stars, or talk about family pasts that Ruby prefers to leave in the past, or teach him to fight. But even if he's not happy with his life with Ruby, he doesn't want to hurt her. But Ruby isn't here- she's with Cardin- and Pyrrha is here, and she- he's not sure what she thinks, why she's willing to do this, if it's just a one-time thing for a friend or just a game, but she-

There's a shuffling in the bushes. And it's not Pyrrha.

It's a lone Beowolf. Jaune, alone with just Crocea Mors for protection, tries to run, but it's faster and he can't. He has to fight. So Jaune does- it's hard, he's untrained, he just has some fundamentals Pyrrha taught him- but he wins. He's hurt, though nothing that aura won't heal, but he wins, on his own, with his own strength. He makes his first Grimm kill.

Pyrrha applauds. She was watching the whole time, ready to intervene, but didn't- even after he was hurt. Jaune is dumbstruck at the faith, but Pyrrha reminds him that she respects him enough not to fight his battles for him if that's not what he wants. Jaune is touched, deeply moved- and in more than a little bit of pain as more beowolves appear. Pyrrha playfully asks him if he wants to try them too, to which Jaune laughs and asks her for help. Pyrrha effortlessly dispatches them with a bit of style just to show off. Even though it's impressive, any lingering sexual tension is dispelled not just by the pain, but as Jaune remembers the story of Ruby doing the same as a little girl still at Signal (the Red trailer). Pyrrha tends to his injuries as night falls and they watch the stars again, and Jaune thanks her for letting him slay the monster. They go from holding medical tape to end up holding hands without realizing it- but don't release even as they watch the stars.

On Sunday they return to Vale after sleeping most of the morning away. Jaune is rested, restored, and rejuvenated in a way he hasn't been in so long. Life feels great, even as the scars from the fight and the Rose Garden still lingers, and he's glad he did it. Pyrrha is too, and they footsie around agreeing to do it again or not. Jaune brings up that Ruby will be back, and there's no way she'd let him fall into the clutches of another… Grimm. But he's not against waiting for the next time she's out of town, even as he thinks of the sexual tension in the air. Pyrrha asks about the kids, but Jaune waves it off- they hardly seem to care where he is or what he's up to as it is. Pyrrha hesitates about telling Jaune something- but they arrive at his home first, so she doesn't.

Pyrrha drives off and Jaune's left alone in his home, knowing the kids and Ruby will be back tomorrow and his home life will resume. When Jaune enters his bathroom to take a shower, he finds the still-shattered mirror that he never cleaned up... and remembers that the Rose Garden is just as bad.

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Author Notes: End Arc 4. Key points: Pyrrha, Pyrrha, and more Pyrrha. Jaune's downward spiral undergoes a reversal thanks to Pyrrha's support. With her help, Jaune finally makes progress on multiple points, culminating with the camping trip. But despite leaving his house for a week and practically living with her instead, it can't and doesn't last forever- and Jaune ends the week coming back home with problems still unresolved. Jaune may be on a better trajectory, but his marriage is not- not only are the troubles on the home-front still unresolved, but Jaune is seriously considering an affair.

This isn't quite a romance novel, but it's close, and if you were to look through the seven beat structure for Arkos we'd currently be on beat 5. If you're not familiar with the seven beat theory, google 'romance beat structure' and you should be able to find the full summaries. But to date...

 _Beat 1 – The Hook – Why the protagonist needs/wants romance._ **Arc 1: Jaune is unhappy in his marriage and family.  
**

 _Beat 2 – The Meeting – The two characters meet and an attraction, or reason for one, is established. **ALso Arc 1: Jaune and Pyrrha meet over drinks and shared sense of isolation despite 'perfect' lives.**  
_

 _Beat 3 – Conflict Point 1 – Wherein the protagonist realises they should not be together, as it conflicts with their goal/dream/beliefs. **Arc 2: Jaune is attempting to rebuild his marriage with Ruby and Pyrrha is supporting his efforts.**  
_

 _Beat 4 – Raising the stakes – Wherein the two characters are bound together, despite the conflict. They accept their love/relationship/attraction. **Arc 3: Jaune goes through a crisis point, Pyrrha is there for him, and they sleep in Ruby's bed.**  
_

 _Beat 5 – Conflict Point 2 – The relationship looks good, all is working, but there is niggling doubt. The conflict continues to gnaw away at them, it's a false happiness. **Jaune and Pyrrha's week together, including the trip. Though Jaune is happier, he returns home at the end to still find it in the shambles he left.  
**_

Which means we're heading into the next part of this happy tale...

 _Beat 6 – The Black Moment_


	5. The First Fight

Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY.

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Monday starts off great- or at least good. The children are late but show up to school, where they're properly chastised- even before the talking to they'll get from their mother. They want to meet Pyrrha, their idol, but Jaune tells them that she's supposed to be a secret for now. They show Jaune what they were making outrageous cash withdrawals for- to buy gardening tools and supplies for the Rose Garden. The entire trip was encouraged by Ruby's scolding, meant to find a gift to apologize for their earlier inaction when Jaune was humiliated by the students, which they are deeply ashamed about. They apologize for that- and offer a more personal gift from themselves. On top of the tools (he) paid for, they give him their own gift, what they had used the rest of their own money for: a collection of seeds, rare and diverse for every kind and color of Rose imaginable- a perfect addition to the Rose Garden, which they ask/offer to help him with even though he's typically done it all himself. Jaune isn't sure what to feel, is touched and torn at the same time, but before he can respond the Signal headmaster calls him into the office.

When he steps into the Principal's office, he finds Yang, Blake, and even Weiss waiting for him. Ruby came home from her trip early, on Saturday, and found the house empty and still in a mess from his three day depression streak. She's been tearing Vale apart trying to find him ever since, not even returning home, and the first anyone's seen of him since Friday was when he walked into Signal this morning as if nothing was wrong. Ruby's friends are here to take him straight home, and there's no give this time, not to the bar or even to the gym.

Ruby is waiting for him in the torn and tattered Rose Garden when he gets home, stressed and not having slept since Saturday. It's… not a happy reunion. Ruby is upset, an anger born of stress and worry. She came home to an empty house, the children gone missing, the bathroom mirror shattered, the Rose Garden destroyed, and Jaune nowhere to be found. She was worried sick someone had taken them all away. Jaune's attempts to claim nothing bad happened fail, big time, when Ruby sees the scars on his hands from the third night, and the remains of the Beowolf injuries. That is NOT nothing bad. This is EXACTLY why she didn't want him worrying about aura. This is NOT the sort of home she wanted to return to when they got married.

Jaune and Ruby have a fight- a bad one- escalating to the point of tearing into each other about their marriage. Ruby accuses Jaune of lying to her and abandoning the children by letting them do their trip and then disappearing. Jaune yells back wondering how was he supposed to stop them when he didn't even know- they're far stronger than him anyway, and short of pulling money and letting them starve there was nothing he could do to make them come back. They listen and respond to her, never to him- and besides, considering she was with Cardin on the same continent in the same kingdom at the same time, she was probably closer to them anyway. If she cared so much, even though she's never around to help raise them or keep them in line, then she should take her family with her rather than leave it all the time- and they'd probably respond to a Hunter like Cardin, a real man, anyway.

Which brings back the whole Cardin angle of insecurity, which Ruby sick and tired of. Jaune tells her what Cardin told him, about how he'd be up to sleeping with Ruby if she ever showed interest, and the smile he gave at the end of that night. Ruby doesn't believe that, doesn't believe him, and calls Jaune not only a liar but jealous without reason. Jaune claims he does have a reason- and demands to know if Cardin is really 'just' a friend. To which Ruby doesn't answer directly, but shoots back an equivalence that Cardin is as much a friend Jaune's own 'friend.' The sort of 'friend' he was spending all his time with while she was away- the 'friend' he was gone all weekend.

Oh, she knows. She's known for a while that the two were spending time together, even if he never told her (which he shouts back is because she never asked about his new drinking buddy, his friend). A world-class trainer, former Huntress, turning down teaching offers for present and future Hunters in favor of giving private defense lessons to a civilian male? Even if Pyrrha's past the paparazzi stage of her career, people notice things like that. And when she goes to the same bar as Jaune? And when she's mysteriously missing from her apartment the same weekend Jaune is missing from his home? And when, while investigating her apartment for clues, Blake/Yang/Weiss found evidence that he had spent the night there, repeatedly? The blonde hair on her couch… and the red hair in her bed?

Ruby doesn't _quite_ accuse him of having an affair- doesn't even mention Pyrrha by name- but she's more than found out. Ruby recognizes that the changes Jaune has been going through recently occurred since he met her, and having been increasing the more time he spends with her, and Ruby wants that to end. Especially now that he's been hurt. Ruby demands Jaune stop meeting her- tries to demand he promise her that he'll never talk to her again- but her refusal to acknowledge Pyrrha by saying her name infuriates Jaune. Jaune refuses Ruby's demand by way of silence, and the argument ends with them literally not on speaking terms with each other.

It isn't until Jaune opens the door to leave that they realize they had an audience- that the children have been listening the whole time, wide eyed and alarmed. Jaune doesn't stop for them or comfort them- ignores their pained expressions and tentative outreach for Daddy- and storms past them telling them to talk to their Mother if they want family. Jaune leaves, slamming the front door on the way out. It's not much of a mystery where he's going.

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Author Notes: Not really an Arc, but an important turning point. Key points: Ruby's back, and consequences start to follow as the Affair starts to unravel.

Don't worry, it gets better. (Worse.)


	6. Arc 5

Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY.

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The rest of the week occurs as the fallout occurs, and it's not much of a mystery where Jaune is going after work- he's back in the bar, and then refusing to come home angry and drunk. The one time he did come back, Tuesday morning, it was just to grab clothes and Crocea Mors. When Ruby tried to confront him, it turned into another fight, this time about what he thinks he's taking from her house (clearly he's taking his things- or did she take Crocea Mors in return when he took her name?) that ends with Ruby yelling, Jaune refusing to talk to her again, and the children distressed just in time for school, where Jaune refuses to interact with them. With Ruby and Jaune not even on speaking terms, Ruby's friends and teammates are called in to 'help' even as Jaune refuses to go home each night.

On Tuesday, Weiss, who probably didn't have the best parents or own marriage to model off, uses her influence in Signal to call him out of work in the middle of the day for a lunch of attempted marriage counseling. She's never liked him much, and right now the feeling is mutual, but she argues that they've still been cordial because of reasons other than affection, and that he and Ruby should patch up on for similar reasons. She tries the cold logic of self-interest, pointing out that his job is a sinecure that he owes to Ruby and that he'd have no hope of anything better without her. Jaune, who hates his job, all but laughs in her face. Asking why she bothers if she doesn't like or approve of him, Weiss says that it's not about them, but the people they both know- and even if she doesn't like him, she does like Ruby enough to try to get along with Jaune for her sake. Even if he doesn't love Ruby anymore, he can still play the part and get along for the sake of something, if not someone, else. Jaune asks if that's what her parents did, decides he doesn't want to know, and leaves with a parting shot of how that would explain so much about her, and how little he'd want to inflict that on his any child of his. Weiss, who has no children of her own and married for politics, not love, doesn't stop him to disagree.

On Wednesday, Yang crashes in on his drink at the bar while waiting for Pyrrha. If Weiss was cold and logical, Yang is a volcano of emotional reasoning- trying to berate sense into Jaune, that Ruby is the best person ever as both sister and wife, and that he's stupid for forgetting it. Jaune disputes that, claiming that he's been miserable for a long time, even if he's just realizing it. Yang doesn't believe it- demands to know why he didn't talk to friends like her to fix things if there were problems- and Jaune angrily confesses he doesn't believe they're friends. Yang is Ruby's friend as well as sister, is on her side and always will be, just like everyone else he knows. Not one of Ruby's friends would ever side with him over her in a real fight, and they never even let him just vent because they always take things straight to Ruby. Who would try to fix things, but make things worse, because her being so wonderful and well-intentioned and fixing everything for him IS the problem. He's drunk, and also angry, and Yang doesn't get it because what's it matter who fixes a problem so long as it gets fixed? She's also a bit angry and hurt that Jaune thinks she doesn't give a damn despite being his sister-in-law, even as she's angry that he spent the last week spending time dodging curfew and sneaking around with Pyrrha. Which rather proves his point about how much of friends they really are, doesn't it? Because she just tried to lock him up alone in his own home alone just because Ruby asked, giving him and Pyrrha no choice but to sneak around... though considering how easily they did, they probably needn't have bothered. That's how much Yang (didn't) care. It almost comes to blows because Yang wants to beat the (bull)shit out of him and knock some sense into him and drag him back to the family by force. When Pyrrha arrives, she and Yang actually do come to blows when Jaune chooses to stay with Pyrrha rather than leave with Yang to go back to Ruby. Yang is forced to leave by the bartender, and Jaune really does go to Pyrrha's apartment this night rather than sleep in a hotel (which no one realized he'd done) because it's the only place he feels safe.

But Thursday is the worst with Blake- who doesn't yell or threaten or tell him to get over it, but who tries to appeal to his morals and role as a family man. She reminds Jaune that none of Team RWBY had 'good' families, and that some of them still don't. Weiss married for politics and to reform her company, not love. Blake and Yang haven't married at all, and Blake admits she doesn't even have the experience of being or having a parent to relate to. But while Ruby lost her mother, she grew up with a loving father- and Blake thinks that made a difference. Blake says that Ruby was the one of them who most wanted to raise a good family one day- and was the happiest when she and Jaune married. That she got her fairy tale ending, and found someone who would be a good parent even as she tried to be a good person and help Remnant as a Huntress. But even if the fairy tale faded- even if it's not all happy- Jaune should shouldn't let his troubles with Ruby ruin his marriage. He should think of his children.

It's a touching monologue. It should work. In fact it almost does, and for the first time that week Jaune thinks about returning home to Ruby. But when Blake brings in the children at the end, something snaps- and Jaune abruptly leaves, coldly telling Blake that she really doesn't know what she's talking about.

Jaune goes to Pyrrha's place- not caring if Blake is following or not- and when he enters he makes his way directly to her bedroom, angrier than he's ever been. Pyrrha tries to ask what's wrong, but Jaune won't, can't, talk through a shaking rage. Jaune needs intimacy, not discussion, and embraces Pyrrha without saying a word. Confused but concerned, Pyrrha lets him lead her to the bed as they embrace, and the scene fades to black.

Jaune doesn't stay the night- in fact, Jaune is leaving for the Rose home just a few hours later. When Jaune leaves Pyrrha's place in, it's with the intent of trying to talk with Ruby and explaining (calmly) why her friends are making things worse. But when Jaune returns home it's to a mess and Ruby in the Rose Garden. Despite a few modest attempts to repair the damage- the children's tools suggest who's to blame for that- the Garden is still a mess- and worse now, in a way, with the scar of an obvious scythe cut against the garden wall.

In the center of the garden, where a sitting area is centered around a special plotter with the Family Roses, with one unique rose for each family member, is Ruby with an open letter. Someone sent Ruby a Dear Jaune letter, 'helpfully' informing her that Jaune has been cheating, with the photos of Jaune's time with Pyrrha across the weeks as evidence. Including the embrace from just a few hours prior. Jaune thinks of Blake and the rest of Team RWBY, but at this point what does it matter?

Ruby finally, directly, accuses Jaune of having an affair.

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Author Notes: End Arc Five. Key points- (Ruby's) friends try to help the marriage. (Or do they?) They fail. (Or do they?)

In chapter 4, I mentioned that the story roughly follows the 7 Beat romance structure. It's not a perfect fit... because this is an affair story, and Pyrrha isn't the only person romantically involved. Just as the story could be seen through the 7 Beats of Arkos, the fight to sustain the marriage can be seen through the 7 Beatings of Lancaster, in which the (pre-existing) relationship struggles to hang on.

With just a few edits to reflect the different dynamic of romantic triangle/affair fiction for pre-existing couples...

 _Beat 1 – The Meeting – The two characters meeting and attraction, or reason for one, is established. **Act 1 prologue: Jaune and Ruby are married after a Rescue Romance during their youth.**_

 _Beat 2 – The Hook – Why the protagonist needs/wants romance despite already being in a relationship. **Act 1: Jaune is unhappy with Ruby because of multiple reasons, and wants to fix them. Ruby wants Jaune to be happy, and also tries to resolve problems.  
**_

 _Beat 3 – Conflict Point 1 – Wherein the protagonist realises they should not be together, as it conflicts with their goal/dream/beliefs. **Act 2: Both Jaune and Ruby's attempts to resolve the problems backfire, culminating in the night of the party.**  
_

 _Beat 4 – Raising the stakes – Wherein the two characters are separated for a time, after a conflict. Their distance allows new openings for rivals in light of discord/distance/tension. **Act 3 and 4: Ruby is gone with Cardin after Jaune ruins the party. Jaune is with Pyrrha for the week and the weekend camping.**  
_

 _Beat 5 – Conflict Point 2 – The relationship looks bad, the alternatives seem to be working, but there is niggling hope. The conflict continues to gnaw away at them, and happiness with another is a false happiness. **Act 5: Despite their differences, neither part wants to sunder the relationship quite yet. For Jaune, despite the party and the breakdown, Jaune doesn't do anything with Pyrrha over the weekend in part due to thoughts of Ruby. Despite the fight, Jaune's increased time with Pyrrha has no hint of happiness. For Ruby, despite the party she comes home early and searches for Jaune. Despite their fight and not being on speaking terms, Ruby calls for help to reconcile.  
**_

Which leads us, from both Arkos and Lancaster perspectives, to this point, and the next beat.

 _Beat 6 – The Black Moment  
_

 _It all goes wrong, all hope is lost.  
_

Here's to tomorrow.


	7. The Fight to End All Fights

Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY.

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Thus starts the fight to end all fights.

/

Ruby accuses Jaune of sleeping with Pyrrha- who she finally acknowledges in the accusation. The fight starts off much like the previous fight ended, with Jaune saying Pyrrha is just a friend, while Ruby counters that it hardly makes a difference at this point if he's having an affair. Jaune denies it, and Ruby points out all the various things that really make that hard to believe. Just how close Jaune and Pyrrha have gotten from an outsider's perspective is made clear from Ruby's account: from the drinking to the 'private lessons' to the camping trip while she was away- and the evidence RWBY found of Jaune's presence the same week. Jaune is upset on Pyrrha's behalf that Team RWBY broke into her apartment, but Ruby makes no apologies considering he was missing, hurt... and the red hairs of Pyrrha's in Ruby's own bed. Ruby didn't cross into another woman's house, another woman's bed, first. And that's not even touching the incriminating photos of their time together and Pyrrha obviously happy. Whatever Jaune may feel for Pyrrha, Ruby can't trust her. Jaune says she can, because she (Pyrrha) saved Jaune's life- an echo of Ruby's earlier defense of Cardin. Ruby argues that it was only because Pyrrha put Jaune in danger in the first place.

Ruby makes an argument that love means protecting the people most important to you- keeping them safe even if it means risking yourself- and that leaving Jaune in danger and letting him be hurt shows Pyrrha doesn't love him. But Jaune denies it- not only that Ruby's definition should work both ways and allow him to risk himself for her, not only on the grounds that sometimes love means letting someone take risks for themselves lest it merely be coddling, but more importantly he wasn't referring to the beowolves- he was referring to the third night of Ruby's trip. The night he started to tear up the Rose Garden and almost burned it down.

For the first time in the story, the third night after the party is called what it really was. Pyrrha didn't stop him from recklessly burning down the Rose Garden with him in it- Pyrrha stopped him from burning himself alive in the Rose Garden.

Jaune attempted suicide. And if it weren't for Pyrrha, Ruby wouldn't have come back to a missing husband and ruined garden- she would have returned to find a corpse and a funeral pyre.

Ruby is flabbergasted, shocked out of anger at the revelation, and asks why he'd do such a thing.

Jaune tells her.

/

Jaune lays it out, an entire chapter of laying it all out from his perspective. He's not her husband in the sense of being a partner in life- he's a thing, a doll, something to fulfill her fantasies of a fairy tale marriage. Her favorite doll perhaps, but still just something to come home and play family with and protect from the world, before she constantly leaves him behind to go save it. She'll share all her toys and all her friends, but she never let him share and take part in her accomplishments, and never helped or let him accomplish anything himself. He was what he always hated, being the comic relief stuck in the tree for his own safety while friends and family prepared and left to face monsters without him. He can have anything he wants, except a real challenge to overcome himself, because he's only allowed to have problems for the sake of letting her fix them for him. All so that she can feel good about herself.

Even this- this entire Affair that's not really an affair- it's her trying live her hero fantasy of taking the high road. First she tried to pretend there was nothing wrong in hopes it would go away. Then she wouldn't even acknowledge Pyrrha, even though he hadn't exactly kept it a secret, because he'd finally made his own friend that she didn't control. Then she heroically addressed the symptoms rather than the cause- chiding children and telling him what he could and couldn't worry about and practically locking him away to keep him from drinking in an attempt to 'fix' him. Then, when he wasn't where she thought she'd safely left him, she'd torn apart the city to rescue him from imagined evils so she could be the virtuous Heroine once again. She was probably more upset that he didn't need rescuing than she was at the scratches.

Even now she's taking the high road to play the hero: there's practically a script in her mind for this story, isn't there? She'll confront him and he's supposed to confess and she'll magnanimously forgive him despite being the wounded and innocent party, so long as he promises to go back to faithfully tending this beautiful but stifling rose garden she calls a home. He's supposed to quietly go back to fulfilling her fairy tale dream marriage, and she'll be satisfied knowing that she saved the day by virtue of her superior virtue, and it'll be Happily Ever After once again.

Fuck. That. Shit.

He didn't marry her, didn't give up his name and dreams, just to be her righteous self-pleasure device. He's not going to live a marriage that amounts to emotional masturbation on her part even as he's miserable.

He can't live like that. He almost didn't. And it was Pyrrha, not Ruby, who saved him from that.

/

Ruby is shocked. Horrified. Crushed. Asks how he could ever think such a thing about her- how he thinks she could think such a thing about _him._

If this is about Cardin- Cardin's just a friend, and she swears that's all it is. That's all it ever will be. She's sorry Jaune is unhappy, she never meant for it to be that way, but look at it from her perspective.

Ruby is a Huntress who loves her job. But she loves it because she does great things for countless people across Remnant, even if that does take her away from home more than she'd like. But she leaves because other people need her more than him. Should need her more than him. And she has enemies- enemies who could well try to take their revenge on him if he ever exposed himself as an aura user, ever tried to follow. Vale, at least, is safe. But it's not that she doesn't think well of him- she trusts him with her children, who are the most important things in the world to her, and she trusts them to no one else. Not even a Hunter. She trusted him to raise them, just as she trusted him to keep this garden. She wasn't trying to isolate him- she just wanted him to be friends with her friends.

But not standing by when he struggled? Refusing to do nothing when he was unhappy. That wasn't a lack of respect for him- that wasn't because she didn't care- that was because she did care, because she wanted to help him. Because she loves him- insecurities and failings and all, and she lists them, there's still a good man that she fell in love with so long ago. Someone who never went back on his word, someone who said 'I do' and promised to make her happy for the rest of their lives together- and that's what she had wanted for him. To be happy and safe as a father. Even if she's upset, she would never, ever try to hurt him. And she'd never, ever, lie to him.

Does she mean that? Jaune will ask. Truly, she does, she'll say as she looks into his eyes.

Then who is the father of her children?

/

Jaune reveals a secret he's known all along, and the reason the children have been such a trigger for him: Jaune is sterile, and has been since before their marriage. A consequence of one of the crisis Ruby saved him from in their rescue-romance years.

He's sure that Team RWBY has been in on it from the start- that Weiss has used her influence and the fact that she pays the family doctors to cover it up, and that Yang and Blake would have known and went along with it. Ruby can accuse him of cheating all she wants, but he'll never be able to father a child out, or in, wedlock. The children are hers, not his- in the entire story (and this entire summary) he never refers to them as 'his'- always 'the' or 'her' children- and if he's not the father, then for over a decade she's been keeping the secret of who is. For over a decade, when she first started her Huntress away missions.

How could he be happy as a husband when he's not enough of a man to have ever fathered her children in the first place?

Ruby- shocked once more, quietly asks if he is believes she has been unfaithful. Jaune admits he does- and has ever since she went away on long-term Huntress trips and came back pregnant not just once, something that could have been a one-time thing or accident, but twice. Came back with precious babies that she adored and who listened and took after her, but have never responded to him at all. Kids that look up to any guy with an aura more than him. Kids who didn't care when he was humiliated by their own classmates. Kids who only cared when he took their money away.

Kids who changed and who haven't wanted to be seen with him in public since they entered Beacon- which is coincidentally about the time Ruby started working with Cardin Winchester once again. Who coincidentally was Ruby's partner for her last two-weekend 'mission' to Atlas. Which coincidentally was where the kids were going at the exact same time for 'a matter of family,' fleecing him all the while. What a coincidence, with so many ties to Cardin Winchester… who was coincidentally first started being her occasional partner on away missions around the time the children would have been conceived so many years ago. And who Ruby has claimed is 'just a friend' in the same way Pyrrha is, even as she's accused of Jaune of having an affair.

Ruby pales as she realizes what Jaune is insinuating, and goes white at what he asks.

When did you tell them, Ruby? When were you going to tell me? They day you came back to your home, with your children and their father in tow, and told me that I no longer had a place in it except to tend the garden?

/

No!

That's not Ruby- that's the children, who take break down the door into the Rose Garden shouting frantic denials. They give a flurry of protests and competing explanations as they stumble over themselves and each other to get through to him- they never saw Mom in Atlas, that trip was for him, they don't like Mr. Winchester more than him, they didn't want to be teacher's pets at school, they didn't they didn't they didn't they didn't- they're sorry, they tried to make the Rose Garden better while he was away, please don't be mad Daddy please stop fighting please please Daddy please don't go-

Too uncoordinated to be coherent, too gangly to be composed, their frantic energy and yelling and attempts to grab him send the situation spiraling out of control. Jaune is staring at them in shock, and disbelief, and even anger. This is the point they open up to him? He's supposed to believe them now, this late? There's shouting and yelling and pushing and shoving from every direction until Jaune, overwhelmed, releases a burst of aura like Pyrrha taught him, throwing them off of him into the central garden planter, where the family roses (one for each member of the family) are. The planter shatters, most of the roses are crushed, and there's blood.

Ruby is instantly at their side, demands to know how Jaune could do that- and it's ambiguous if she's referring to the aura burst, hurting the children, destroying the Family Roses, or all of the above. Jaune, who is shocked as well, answers all three as he shouts back that they aren't his roses, he's just the gardener for someone else's seed, isn't he? It's their fault too- she's not the only reason he's been miserable.

Ruby, who's as emotional as he is when the children are involved, ends the argument by demanding to know why he doesn't just leave if he's so unhappy. To which Jaune freezes, and says in a suddenly calm voice... that's a very good question.

And goes.

Jaune walks out the door, not even closing it, leaving Ruby and her children behind in the Rose Garden and in silent shock.

/

* * *

/

Author Notes: End Arc Five. Key points- the fight to end all fights. Jaune feelings are finally laid bare. Everyone finally expresses themselves- and in doing so, Jaune reveals a secret that took root long ago and and finally flowered.

Unlike the rest of the story, where chapters with multiple events per day would have multiple posts per day, this arc would itself be a post-per-day. Rather than one Thursday with a week's worth of chapters, this one Thursday would cover nearly a week- five days of grueling, gripping back-and-forth. With the previous arc ending on a Thursday, this arc would begin on Friday and end on a Tuesday- giving a one day hiatus to pause on the aftermath before resuming again Thursday evening.


	8. Arc 6

Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY.

/

* * *

/

It's still Thursday night, late. Jaune wanders, goes to the bar hoping to see Pyrrha, but she's not there. After a few drinks and thinking about what he's done, what his choices are, and what he really wants- to be happy, to stop being Jaune Rose and to go back to being Jaune Arc, whatever that means to him- he goes to Pyrrha's place, because she's the one person he feels he can talk to. When she opens the door, she's surprised to see him back. After he explains what happened, how Ruby and everyone else thinks they're having an affair, Pyrrha finally, in her own way, broaches the topic of actually doing so.

Pyrrha jokes that if they're going to be treated like they're having an affair, they might as well go ahead and have the fun of actually running away together and eloping- and Jaune finally, finally realizes her feelings. That she's not joking, that she is serious, and that while they they've never crossed the line before she's inviting him to do so now. During the Camping Trip, he had convinced himself that the sexual tension was just something between close friends, and they had both known who he would go back home to. Now- now that his marriage is shattered, the truth can not be taken back, the children rejected-

Before Jaune can give her an answer, Pyrrha reveals something she's been hiding for awhile: she'll have to leave soon, this very weekend in fact. Her friends are married, which is what she came here for in the first place, and it'll be time for her to resume her own job as a Huntress in another Kingdom. She invites Jaune to accompany her, with all that entails- both training to be a Hunter, and more. She tells Jaune to take his time to consider. Even though they sleep in the same bed, back to back, Jaune spends all night awake and unable to sleep as he thinks it over.

/

Come Friday, Jaune goes directly from Pyrrha's apartment to work, which is horrible but he's too out of it to notice. Rumors are already circulating, Jaune is getting word from the Principal (who's getting it from Weiss) that what he's doing is unacceptable as a teacher and example for the students, but Jaune doesn't care and barely pays attention. When the Principle tries to demand that Jaune choose between Pyrrha and his job, Jaune calls the bluff by choosing Pyrrha and daring the Principle to fire him. The Principle admits that he can't- it's a condition of the contract that got Jaune hired- and so Jaune saves him the trouble and quits, walking out then and there.

Before he can walk the doors, the children approach him in full view of everyone else, something they've never done before, to talk about the previous day. He finally does talk to them, unlike the previous week… but treats them like utter strangers, like every other child. He calls the girls 'Mrs. Rose,' and parrots (their) earlier words about not wanting act like family (at school). His distance, and his dropping of his typical closeness that previously annoyed them, clearly rattles and scares them even more then his refusal to talk to them since Monday. When they ask if he'll be at home after school, he absently says yes, he'll go home.

But when he leaves, Jaune doesn't go to where Ruby is. He goes to Pyrrha's place, and she opens the door. Scene fades to black.

/

The next series of scenes is Saturday back at Ruby's place in the Rose Garden, where she's watching as her life dream (or dream life) is unraveling and turning into a nightmare. Team RWBY is rallying to Ruby even as she's been all but catatonic in the Garden since the fight, and there's even a polite message from Cardin, offering to come over and lend Ruby an ear or a shoulder to cry on if she needs one. Which makes her want to cry more. She doesn't take him up on it- takes relief with her friends instead- even as the news they bring is bitter.

Weiss reveals what the Principal told her, that Jaune really quit his job and walked out when challenged about his relationship with Pyrrha, and that Pyrrha's lease for her apartment ended and she's already moved out. Blake was shadowing Pyrrha and Jaune as they went around Vale together, including the courthouse, before she was cut off and forced to break contact by unknown persons. Yang had left to take the kids out of the house and away to a friends place for the night after Ruby was too out of it to care for them, but when she returns she's the one to confront Ruby about what really happened: she heard bits and pieces from the kids, but she wants to know the truth.

 _Someone_ sent the Dear Jaune letters with the photos, likely with the intent of destroying the marriage, and it wasn't Yang. In fact, Blake and Yang weren't even aware that Jaune was sterile- and both of them make clear that Jaune's fears about Cardin and her away trips are more than unfounded petty jealousy in light of that. Ruby should have told him- Ruby should have told them- as Blake points out that either one of them would have been able to sort this whole thing out with Jaune directly. If Blake had known about the children, she wouldn't have made the misstep she did when talking to Jaune, when Jaune stormed out after she was making progress because she dropped the line about the children.

Yang is especially vehement. Yang Rose doesn't give a damn about blood lines getting in the way of family (and it's in this admission we reveal that Yang changed her name back to Rose at some point after her unsatisfactory encounter with her blood mother, who was never what Summer Rose was to her). But while she might want to punch Jaune for his hang-up over sterility, it's Ruby she's angry at. Yang can see what Ruby might have had in mind- that Jaune would be to the children what Summer Rose was to Yang, more of a parent than the blood-parent- but what Ruby did was wrong. What Summer Rose and Tiayang Xiao Long did was based on trust and honesty between the two of them. What Ruby did was a deliberate deception that broke trust- and Yang can't understand why.

This whole affair seems less like a simple case of Jaune cheating, and more of a lover's spat with an unknown fourth party. Ruby's sister or not, Yang's also a sister(-in-law) to Jaune- and she has a dim view of cheating on family, even if it's by family. Yang has one question, and she's known Ruby long enough to know all her tells. If anyone can catch Ruby in a lie, it's Yang.

So the question is: did Ruby have an affair?

/

Ruby denies it.

Ruby reveals that when she realized Jaune was sterile even as they were both interested in and discussing raising children, she went to a Schnee-sponsored fertility clinic with Weiss while on one of those away-missions in order to conceive the children she and Jaune both wanted. She's never known who the donor was, and never cared to find out, but she was afraid that Jaune's insecurities would kick in over the kids if he ever realized he was sterile. She wanted to give him children to call his own.

Blake asks Weiss if it's true, and Weiss claims it is, though she refuses to reveal who the donor was- only admitting that it was a Hunter. Ruby tried to keep it all a secret in hopes that Jaune would never know, and thus never treat the children differently. She had no clue he ever even suspected, considering he never made an issue or gave any hint of it.

Ruby swears that there was never anything between her and Cardin, past or present- and considering that she and Cardin hadn't even crossed paths in almost a decade after the children were born, she was honestly taken aback by Jaune's accusation of infidelity. To her, it came out of nowhere- she knew there was nothing between her and Cardin, had never been, and thought that Jaune's recent concerns were just the insecurities of a mid-life crisis. But now- well, if even Blake and Yang doubted her, and if even her own children asked her if it was true, she can hardly blame Jaune for suspecting the worse.

But she didn't cheat on him. She swears.

Yang, after a pause and examining Ruby, says she's not lying. Her friends believe her. Even if Yang and Blake think she did the wrong thing, they still care for her, and Team RWYB gathers in solidarity with Ruby. Despite their reservations- even if Weiss has always disapproved of Jaune, even if Yang and Blake think Ruby caused the problem- they want to help Ruby.

/

Team RWBY gathers in the Rose Garden, ugly and smashed as it is, to figure out how to put Ruby's marriage back together- if it's possible at all. To do that, they they need to figure out how, exactly, it went wrong- and why it broke now all of all times. If Jaune believed Ruby unfaithful from the start, why didn't it break years ago? What changed?

And that stumps everyone- if Jaune was so miserable all along, why had he never brought it up?

Well, that part is easy enough to answer- as Yang knows from her talk with Jaune. Jaune, besides being insecure, didn't trust them as friends because they were Ruby's friends first. But that doesn't explain why Jaune had never made an issue of it, hadn't simply gotten divorce papers and left long ago. Why raise someone else's children for as long as he did, if his sterility was such a trigger?

Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang piece together what they believed happened from what they know, and what they know about Jaune, putting the entire marriage in context.

Ruby begins from the start by realizing a key implication: if Jaune had known from the start that he was sterile, he wouldn't have been talking to her about _having_ children- he'd actually been talking to her about **_raising_ ** children. As in, adoption. But Jaune, too insecure to admit that he was sterile, and not knowing she knew, never put it in terms of adoption. Ruby, not knowing he knew, thought he didn't, and so he and Ruby had been talking at cross-purposes from the start. Jaune had been trying to broach adopting children, thinking she didn't know he was sterile- and Ruby thought he wanted to have children, but didn't know he couldn't- and so Ruby decided to spare him the insecurity and went to conceive them.

Yang picks up that the kids, themselves, are probably not the problem for Jaune. If Jaune had been thinking adoption from the start, he'd already been prepared to raise children he didn't sire. To be 'Daddy' to a child that wasn't 'his.' It's the fact that Ruby got pregnant- which in the day of modern medicine doesn't require intercourse, but sure as hell implies it. Like Jaune implied in the argument, the first time wasn't the issue. A one-time thing, an accident, or even a tragedy Ruby hadn't wanted to talk about and pretended that all was well, so he would to. But twice, back to back- that's not an accident. That's deliberate. Ruby was trying, and succeeding, at getting pregnant- and not with him.

That's easy enough to figure out. But why did Jaune stay, if he suspected infidelity from the start?

It's Weiss who puts her finger on why, piecing it together with Jaune's words to her about how he'd never want to stay in a marriage for reasons other than love, and how he wouldn't want to inflict a loveless marriage on any child of his. At first she'd thought it was a sign he was truly having the affair and preparing to divorce Ruby- then in light of the sterility revelation, perhaps he was was willing to put up with it because the children weren't his and he wouldn't be inflicting 'his' children- but it's neither of those, is it? If Jaune had been willing to adopt from the start, then the 'his children' angle is a symptom and not the root of the problem.

Jaune stayed so long as he did because there was love in the marriage- his love for Ruby, even if he feared about her love for him.

Jaune, who had never admitted to sterility, would have known from the doctored doctor results that Weiss and Ruby (and, he assumed, everyone else) knew, but didn't think he knew, and didn't want him to know. When Ruby came home pregnant the first time he might have thought it a one-time thing. Jaune had loved her enough to forgive a one-night accident and let it be Ruby's shameful secret if it was something worse. He wouldn't, couldn't, have imagined Ruby would do such a thing deliberately, and so forgave her without confronting her- when she came hope pretending the child was his, he did the same. After all, he'd been willing to adopt in the first place.

But when child number two came along so quickly after- and when, by coincidence, Ruby's mission partner both times was Cardin Winchester...

Blake guesses what happened next- Cardin left Vale soon after the second conception, even before Ruby revealed she was pregnant again. Ruby didn't seem distressed, didn't try to follow him, and was probably spending more time at home with the babies. To Jaune, it probably seemed that the assumed affair, brief as it was, was over- possibly just for the purpose of children. Jaune was hurt, but still loved Ruby- and spent the interim hoping he could win her back by being the good husband who was there, earn the love of the children, and secure his place in the family. Which he probably thought he was succeeding in, because he already had, and because Ruby would have given no indication or hint of having an affair during the time she, well, wasn't having an affair or coming home pregnant. Whereas she clearly loved the children, who Jaune was raising, and still seemed fond of Jaune, who hadn't pushed the argument. Neither of which would be guaranteed if he'd confronted her about Cardin after the fact, well after Cardin had already left.

Jaune stayed, despite the children, because he loved Ruby and thought he could win back her love, and faithfulness, by raising the children to love him.

But then Cardin came back to Vale, and Ruby realizes that's the point things started to go wrong and where Jaune's fears took new life. Ruby was spending time and missions with Cardin, who after so many years had grown up into a good man worth calling a friend. The children entered a bratty phase she wasn't around to deal with, even as they got into all things Hunter, just as they were entering Signal. Jaune began his descent into drinking due to the stress, which caused friction with Ruby, which made everything else worse.

From Jaune's perspective, Cardin's return would have been the answer to everything that was going wrong and had ever gone wrong with the marriage: the return of the prime suspect in the suspected Ruby affair, the 'real man' who could have fathered the children, a Hunter the children would have respected more than him, a father they wouldn't have avoided being seen at school with, and someone with the ability to go out and spend time with Ruby, with accomplishments enough to be respected and win her heart. And the fact that of all his concerns, the one Ruby refused to acknowledge or address, the one thing she fought him over, was Cardin?

Really, it's not hard to believe Jaune would have a counter-affair- it's harder to believe he didn't for so long. Ruby's torn apart by the thought, all the more so because many of their previous conversations take a new light in the knowledge of what he knew. The away-missions, the Cardin angle, the children- it all ties back to that not-so-little white lie so long ago.

/

But that still doesn't explain the 'why now.' Jaune almost certainly didn't cheat until recently, even after the last years of Cardin's return and the kids in Signal. Not until something else changed. Not until Pyrrha.

None of the girls were close to Pyrrha back in Beacon- only Weiss remembers the long-former Champion who was head of their class- but they've all looked into Pyrrha during the weekend of Jaune's disappearance, and it's not hard to guess what happened.

Yang bets she knows how it started: Jaune met Pyrrha at a bar. Over drinks, Jaune confesses his woes- and his reasons- to a stranger unassociated with Ruby, who he could trust more than any of them. Blake, who investigated Pyrrha's personal connections, recognizes her as someone who was lonely and with few relationships- someone who would recognize Jaune's lack of attachments, and be willing to approach him. Which, to Yang, sounds more like targeting- and the more Pyrrha talked with him, how much do you want to bet that she encouraged Jaune to focus on his troubles with the family, to doubt his friends, so that he'd listen more to her? Weiss, a politician by trade, can see the subtle clues of a calculating woman- that Pyrrha laid the groundwork and made subtle suggestions for Jaune to confront Cardin at the party, so that he'd make a fool of himself right before Ruby left. Blake, knowing a love plot when she reads one, can guess why- after Jaune is humiliated and Ruby gone, she'd come to comfort Jaune, spiriting him away for an affair. And if that didn't work- and Weiss is willing to concede for the sake of an argument that Jaune might not have cheated over the weekend- she'd have a fall back plan. Yang picks up what Weiss is insinuating- Pyrrha had every opportunity, and the best reason of all, to send the Dear Jaune letter herself- an anonymous tip to break the Rose marriage apart, leaving Jaune free for her. After all, who is Jaune with now?

The girls come to a consensus. The villain is clearly Pyrrha. If they expose Pyrrha as the home-wrecker she is, Jaune might come back. The solution is to find evidence linking Pyrrha to the Dear Jaune letter.

It's Ruby who tells them off.

/

Ruby's reaction stuns them, letting Ruby speak her mind.

There is no villain in this story- there's no 'good' or 'bad' sides in play- and even if there was, it's as likely to be anyone in the Rose Garden right now as Pyrrha. Each and every one of them had the ability, the opportunity, and even the potential motivation to send the Dear Jaune letter. Every one of them, and Ruby goes through them one by one.

Weiss has never liked Jaune, something that caused friction between her and Ruby in the past, and her political machination skills could have seen this as an opportunity to break Ruby from the dunce while deflecting the blame. After all, Weiss has the money and resources to spy on Jaune, and as a intrigue-expert she should have, perhaps did, know that her attempt at marriage counseling would backfire- that talking to Jaune about the job he hated and linking it to Ruby would backfire, and only sour relations. And yet Weiss had been the first to respond when Ruby had asked her friends for help, and pulled strings to talk to Jaune first.

Or perhaps Blake- who has always supported Ruby's marriage with Jaune as a sort of 'living a happy marriage by proxy' experience, and had an equally romantic take on their marriage as Ruby. Perhaps Blake noticed the brewing affair, well versed in her romance novels as she is, and was angry on Ruby's behalf. She has the skills to sneak and spy. She definitely had the opportunity, considering Jaune when to Pyrrha's intimate embrace was after parting ways with Blake. Maybe Blake was the anonymous 'friend' who really wanted what she thought was best for Ruby, to bring the truth to light- a truth she would have been well-placed to be the first to know. After all, how would have Blake missed Pyrrha coming and going, or Jaune leaving, had she been watching the house like Ruby had asked?

Even Yang- who at this point is glaring on behalf of her friends but is stared down by Ruby as her sister comes to her- even Yang could be a suspect. She was supposed to keep an eye on the family when Ruby was away- and yet she let Pyrrha come and go as well, and on her watch Jaune was practically locked away alone and attempted suicide. And Ruby knows exactly who took the kids to the airship port and enabled them to do their trip- it might have been Ruby's advice to find a gift for Jaune, but she'd never encourage them to undermine Jaune or skip school to do so. A motivation for the Dear Jaune letter might be harder to pin down... but perhaps Jaune **_had_ ** confessed his fears about Cardin to Yang at some point, or she'd picked up on it on her own, and Yang had agreed, and this was her way of letting Ruby be burned by the consequences of her own actions. That Yang didn't like cheating on family, even if it was by family, and this was her way of bringing it back to Ruby?

The two sisters stare at each other. Weiss, who is angry after all of them have been challenged and accused of being horrible people after just wanting to help her, coldly asks Ruby if Ruby is admitting to cheating. Blake interjects that Ruby already denied it, and Yang would have known if Ruby was lying. And Yang, in a tense sort of way, says that she already said she didn't place the Dear Jaune letter, right?

But Ruby counters with a question of her own. Even if Yang might know if Ruby was lying... who would be able to spot if Yang was lying? About the letter... or lying about Ruby _not_ lying?

Even Ruby is a suspect for the Dear Jaune letter. If paranoid speculation is going to replace critical thinking, why not apply the same standards to her? Prove that she didn't have an affair with Cardin- that she didn't have Cardin obtain the photos, that she didn't put the Dear Jaune letters in her mailbox herself. That this isn't one huge gambit to drive Jaune away so she could have that 'real man' and Hunter father for the kids.

Hell... prove that **_Jaune_** didn't place the letter in the mailbox. That he didn't stage the fight, just so that he could get back at her for so many years ago and create the excuse to run away with Pyrrha. Because if we're going this far to suspect foul play, to the point of making up motives to fit theories, why not suspect the one they all suspected from the start?

But don't blame Pyrrha just because she's the obvious target. Not unless they have proof. Assumptions without proof, projecting motives, accusations without evidence... those are what caused this mess in the first place. Everyone involved- Pyrrha, Jaune, Ruby herself- they're all responsible, even if no one person is to blame for this Affair. Even her friends- as minor actors in this as they were- even they had a role in making things worse.

Weiss and Blake are appropriately contrite. Yang, who was the quietest during Ruby's rampage, asks her why she's so sure Pyrrha isn't the one who sent the Dear Jaune letter to destroy the marriage.

Ruby, thinking about the week before the ball, of the changes Jaune had gone through even as he tried but failed to improve the marriage, knows why.

Because Pyrrha was the one who tried to help Jaune save it.

/

Ruby has a dream- a flashback- of an earlier time of their marriage during the interim, when things had seemed so perfect. Of returning home from a grueling mission, tired and sore, and finding the house quiet and empty but the family in the Rose Garden. Of Jaune sitting against the Family Roses, the six-year-old children sleeping against him and curled up to him and hugging him in their sleep. A beautiful scene, in the shade of the central area despite the sun shining on the beautiful colors of the roses. Instead of waking them- instead of moving them away and into bed- Jaune let them sleep, and tenderly twirled their hair with the same gentleness he used to tend the roses. Ruby remembers leaning against the wall and watching him watch the children, a faint and patient smile on his face. Remembers the look he gave her when he realized she was back.

She remembers a look of love, remembers loving him so much in return, and remembers thinking that she made the right choice in keeping the secret.

The moment she thinks that, the dream shifts into a nightmare- a callback to Jaune's 'good marriage/bad marriage' duality from the start of the story. The sunlight fades as night falls, with only a broken moon with no stars giving a harsh light. The rose garden withers, losing its color but showing its thorns as a cold breeze blows away the petals, revealing the scythe scar Ruby had inflicted on the wall earlier in the story. The children age in their sleep- not the innocent children of years ago, but the budding and occasionally bratty adolescents they were earlier in the story. Their arms become like vines and roots with jagged thorns, no longer hugging but trapping and hurting Jaune with the same scratches he had after returning from the camping trip. But his expression- the expression has changed from something gentle to resentful, his smile into a sneer even as his hands bleed in handling the thorns in their hair. For a second Jaune himself changes- substituted for Cardin Winchester, who is big and strong and whose strength and aura withstand any thorns but whose sneer is the same, the same sneer Cardin used to have so long ago. Ruby fears for her children in the arms of Cardin, until it's Jaune once again. Jaune looks up and smiles with love.

But not at her- and Ruby realizes that she's no longer leaning against the wall but _is_ the wall, or rather the roses lined along the wall, as a head of long red hair walks into her field of vision. Pyrrha makes her way to Jaune, who lets go of the children to reach for her. The children still trap him, though, and Pyrrha pulls for her weapon as if to cut them- except it's not Milo she pulls, its Jaune's lighter and a full wine glass, and Jaune looks positively ecstatic as she approaches the Family Roses. Pyrrha pours the wine on Jaune's Rose and lights it on fire- and as his yellow rose ignites, so does he, burning alive but looking relieved at the same time. Ruby watches in horror as the flames spread from him to the children, which sets their Family Flowers ablaze, even as they don't wake and stop moving and even breathing as their limbs burn away. This frees Jaune, who falls into Pyrrha's arms. He burns, the children burn, and soon the entire garden silently burns as Ruby, helpless and impotent in the form of the distant roses against the wall, can only wait for the fire to reach her.

The only thing that doesn't burn is Pyrrha, who pulls Jaune out of the fire- alive, unharmed, and almost heroic with Crocea Mors and armor that is matched to Pyrrha's. Jaune is in the same position, in the same embrace, that he had with Pyrrha in the incriminating photos… which is the same embrace they had the night of the Rose Garden. Only this time the perspective is from Jaune's back, not his front, in a callback to the night of the Party. Ruby realizes this- realizes that this must have been Jaune's perspective when she walked away from him and towards Cardin- and as the Rose Garden burns Jaune's focus is not on her at all but entirely on Pyrrha. Ruby's trapped and can't be heard no matter how much she tries to scream because roses clearly have no voices with which to make themselves heard… and as the flames encroach her vision and she's sure to be next, her last view is of Jaune's back-

-and Pyrrha looking over his shoulder, seeing her off with a smile.

/

Ruby wakes up Sunday morning in her own bed, shaken by the nightmare, but relieved it was just a dream- until she realizes that the spot in the bed where Jaune should be is empty. Remembering the fight, Ruby makes her way to the kitchen, where the rest of Team RWBY is already up and awake. Ruby remembers how the last night ended- how after the climax and counter-accusations, they hadn't made any resolution until they had disbanded, no progress being made on how to salvage Ruby's marriage. Now, as she walks in, they stop to look at her.

Ruby feels guilty for what she said. She apologizes for the insinuations she leveled- accusations she hopes they know she didn't mean. Ruby is stressed, and tired, but she knows they mean well. It's just... sometimes meaning well isn't enough. She used to think love alone would be enough, but now she knows better, and she's sorry she's rambling but what she's trying to say is that she's sorry and that they're better friends than she deserves for putting up with her and she's sorry and-

She's interrupted by a hug. They know.

Friends are there for you when family isn't, and while this might be Ruby's darkest hour it's not one she has to face alone. Breakfast is shared. Team RWBY plans based on what they can.

Who is to blame for the Dear Jaune letter? They don't know. How can they get Jaune back from Pyrrha? They don't know. Where are Jaune and Pyrrha? They don't know. Can they even find Jaune and Pyrrha, if the two don't want to be found? They don't know.

What do they know? They'll walk the streets of Vale all day if they have to, looking for them. What will they do if they find him? Talk, and try to explain things, and hope he's in a mood to listen. And if he's not...

They don't know, because Ruby doesn't know.

Ruby finishes her breakfast goes to the bathroom to clean up- and finds the mirror _still_ in shambles, because while someone else cleared away the shards, she's been so focused on everything else that she hasn't done anything to maintain the home or the Rose Garden. Idly thinking that she'll have to get used to doing that now, Ruby cleans herself up and prepares to look for her husband.

In the distance there's a knock on the front door. It's Jaune and Pyrrha.

/

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/

Author Notes: End Arc Six. Key points- Jaune and Pyrrha's moment of decision, and Team RWBY's rally. After so long being gone and seeing things through Jaune's biases, we finally see things through Ruby's perspective- and through the contrast, we are closer to the truth. No, Ruby is not a harpy or horrible person. Surprise surprise, no one (and anyone) can be the villain of the story. Yes, the entire Affair could have been worked out if both parties had talked more. Who'd a thought honesty would be good advice in a marriage dispute based on secrets and misunderstandings?

Well, it's too late now- the die is cast, and whatever Ruby intended it's what Jaune feels that matters. And after that fight...

This is a whoozie of a section with a fair deal of late-side elaboration to make things clearer for the audience. Pretty close to giving dialogue for some of the scenes. If it's not blatantly obvious, the weekend of posting is (would be) the the finale of the story. Were it to be written out and posted in semi-real time, most people would be checking back on it constantly all day. Saturday alone has... five? Maybe six? Updates that would span most of the day. And the entire finale the next day on Sunday. People would be on their computers hitting 'refresh' every hour or more until complete.

Just as planned, of course. A great sense of climax for anyone who had the guts to hold out from start to finish. Which I doubt most people would- considering how many people feel amazed at how depressed they are from reading the abridged summary, I shudder to think how many would have been downright suicidal if they'd taken in the full experience. I'd worry I was a murderer if some people stopped reviewing without saying goodbye...

Also, on an unrelated question for the audience- did this story get raised on a forum or something as the 'must read and cry' fic of the week? Last chapter got a surge of reviews of first-time reviewers expressing shock and despair and amazement and stuff. Which is cool- I've never gotten a PM from a fellow author going 'keep your whiny readers to yourself' after said author got begged to write something happier- but it is surprising.


	9. Finale

Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY.

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Accompanying Jaune and Pyrrha are the two shadows who interfered with Blake earlier: Ren and Nora, who are introduced as Pyrrha's own teammates and her friends that were just married. They're here to support Jaune and Pyrrha, just as WBY is here for Ruby, and there's a tense showdown over how this confrontation will go. It almost boils over before that- WBY don't want to leave Ruby alone in a two-on-one, while Jaune and Pyrrha don't want interference, but also don't want Ren and Nora outnumbered three-to-two. It looks tense- but Yang volunteers to leave even before Ruby tells her friends she'll be face them alone.

Finally, after so long, Jaune, Ruby, and Pyrrha sit in the same room to talk. Though Ruby wants to speak first, to say what she understood over the previous night, Jaune stops her: they came here with things to say, and they need to say them first. After so long not saying what he felt, he has things he needs to say. But if this turns into another argument- or if Ruby tries to keep him here by force- then JNPR really will fight their way out of this house if they have to.

Pyrrha begins with the defense: she and Jaune have never had sex. And she can prove it too, because that's what she and Jaune were up to in Vale after Blake broke contact: they went to a doctor who could verify that her hymen is intact. Pyrrha is practically a 40-year old virgin. Though they slept in the same bed, repeatedly, they never consummated an affair. (Ruby, wisely, doesn't bring up the other sorts of sex possible.)

But Jaune follows up the defense with the confession: though they didn't have an affair, they did discuss one. He'd even been considering one, with another camping trip. But worst of all they even planned one. One that would involve eloping this evening, with Jaune leaving for Sanctum with Pyrrha.

Which brings the question of... why are they here, telling Ruby in her own home? To throw it in her face? To rub salt in the wounds on their way out? To which the answer is... that depends on her, doesn't it?

/

Jaune shows Ruby what he went to the courthouse for with Pyrrha for: not divorce papers, but a legal name change. Jaune Rose wants to officially be Jaune Arc once more. He isn't just going to accept a life he's not happy with anymore: he meant it when he quit his job, he is going to change his life and try to fix his own problems, and that is going to involve seeking the training to use aura and learn to fight. Even if he'll never be half of what a full-fledged Hunter trained from childhood could be. It's something he needs to do in order to respect himself, even if it doesn't win the respect of anyone else. He's not just going to pretend to be happy when he's not- he wants, needs, to be honest with himself about that. And he wants to be with someone who he can be the same sort of honest with, and expect honesty in return.

But part of that, part of being Jaune Arc again even at age 38, is that Arcs don't go back on their word. He married Ruby- he admired her because she was a Huntress, and loved her because she wanted to be one in order to help others, and he still respects that even now. Just because they're having hard times now doesn't mean he should go back on his word on his own. Just because he's afraid she's had an affair herself while overseas to conceive the children, with someone like Cardin or otherwise who could be a 'real man' as a Hunter, doesn't give him license to break his marriage vow. No matter what she did, or didn't, do, he will keep his word. That's what being Jaune Arc means to him. Any other truth is irrelevant compared to that one.

If she can forgive him, not for having an affair but for considering it and scaring her and not handling this gracefully, then he can forgive her, for whatever she did or did not do. He'll work on repairing their marriage, if she wants to. If she thinks it's worth trying- if she thinks there's anything left worth saving.

But that's only if she signs the paperwork. Jaune Arc would stay because Arcs never go back on their word. Jaune Rose is under no such obligation.

If she won't- or if she doesn't want to because this isn't the marriage she had in mind, this isn't the ending she wanted, he isn't the sort of husband they wanted- then they can have their marriage annulled. It'll be messy if she fights it, or easy if she doesn't. She'll be free to be the Huntress and have that family of Hunters and adventure. And he'll be free to leave without breaking his word. No matter what she chooses, Jaune Rose's days are numbered.

Jaune doesn't give her divorce papers, but in an echo of Pyrrha's words to him he gives her time to think. Jaune steps out to await her response in the Rose Garden.

/

Jaune steps out, but Pyrrha doesn't. She and Ruby have a tense, but frank, discussion. Despite standing up for her last night, Ruby doesn't like Pyrrha- the closest she can come to saying 'hate'- because of what Pyrrha has come to represent for her. The end of her happy marriage. If there were problems she wasn't aware of, and Pyrrha was really interested in saving the marriage, then Pyrrha could have, should have, approached her directly... or replied to her earlier inquiries. It's here that Ruby reveals that she had looked into Jaune's drinking buddy- and been rebuffed by Pyrrha.

Because that would rather defeat the point of Pyrrha being Jaune's friend and confidant, and not Ruby's. Ruby has enough allies, and Pyrrha makes no apologies for being on Jaune's side. Pyrrha admits she wasn't interested in saving Ruby's marriage- she was only interested in helping Jaune try and be happy. Ruby was a means to that end, and if she failed to make Jaune happy, when Ruby failed to recognize or appropriately respond to Jaune's attempts to save the marriage, Pyrrha would be more than happy to step in after it failed on its own. If Ruby needed Pyrrha to point out that Jaune's attempts were desperate last gasps to preserve the marriage, then Ruby and all her friends really weren't paying any attention to or trying to understand Jaune.

Pyrrha has echoes of Cardin when she doesn't like Ruby in return- she can understand why Jaune respects Ruby, but not why he loves her. From Pyrrha's perspective, Ruby was so absorbed in the fairy tale, so wrapped up in her own perspective and her own wants, she couldn't see that Jaune was miserable, and miserable in large part because Ruby didn't have faith in him and wasn't helping him have faith in himself. Didn't even have enough faith to trust him with the truth of his own sterility. Pyrrha doesn't know if Ruby had an affair or not to conceive the children- won't assume one way or another without proof- but if she did, then Pyrrha would hate her for what she put Jaune through.

To Pyrrha, Ruby is the one who doesn't deserve Jaune- because Pyrrha believes Jaune could be doing so much more good in the world than what Ruby ever was willing to let him, and yet Jaune for so long tried to improve himself just so that he could be happy with Ruby and earn the respect of the kids. That Jaune was faithful and loved her, even when she, when both of them (Ruby and Pyrrha), gave him every chance and reason not to- and that if he'd just said 'yes' just once to Pyrrha's overtures, or taken the initiative himself after his failures with Ruby, Pyrrha would have made sure they had a life in which they were both happy, and not just her.

Pyrrha also gives Ruby a piece of paper- which actually is divorce paperwork- and asks Ruby to consider what would make Jaune, and not just herself, happy. Pyrrha too steps out to wait in the Rose Garden.

/

Ruby is left to ponder her choice, and the papers.

She can try to salvage the marriage if she signs the name change- it will be hard, messy work, it'll involve a lot of changes and probably more arguments, and she can't even count on the support of friends who have been in her corner so long that they really don't like Jaune right now. That name change would represent an irrevocable difference and gap between them- even if they remained together, they'd never share the same name, the single undivided family she had wanted so much. It would involve a lot of hard conversations with her children and Jaune both, conversations she never wanted to have. If she tries, and it doesn't work, it could be just as miserable as now, or worse. Jaune Arc will keep his word, whether he's happy or not. It's hard times at best with a chance of something at the end, or a miserable marriage as a real possibility.

On the other hand, she can sign the divorce papers and annul the marriage- cut ties, cut losses, and let the future sort itself out in its own way while making way for Pyrrha and Jaune. It would still mean having to make hard choices and decisions about the children. It would still be messy. But it would be simpler in some ways. That fact that this is the default if she does nothing- if she refuses to sign the name change, Jaune and Pyrrha will elope regardless- also weighs on her. What Pyrrha says- about thinking about Jaune, about not caring just for her own happiness- lingers in her mind.

Ruby approaches the Rose Garden undecided, only to find the door already open. Quietly stepping in, pausing at the door in the same spot as from the dream and so long ago, Ruby watches unnoticed. She finds Jaune and Pyrrha standing beside each other in the garden's center, right by the ruined Family Roses. Even she can see that they are clearly comfortable in each other's presence, even as Pyrrha admires the evident effort still visible behind the shattered, torn, Rose Garden that could only be beautiful again with a great deal of work. To Jaune's surprise, a little bit has already been done: though the planter is still broken, someone has cleared the shards, and the soil that had been inside regathered into a humble mound. He has no clue who would do such a thing- Ruby, in their entire marriage and even over the week of the fight, has not once ever tended the garden, leaving it all to him.

Making her decision, Ruby leaves both papers behind and steps forward.

/

Ruby makes her presence, and her intent, known when she walks past Jaune and Pyrrha to the Family Roses. Ruby kneels before the small pile of dirt, and carefully cradles the sole surviving rose of the Family Roses it was centered around. The one rose that survived when the majority were destroyed, the one rose that survived when the planter was shattered, and the one rose that hadn't burned in her dream.

A single blooming red rose. Her flower, which she offers to Jaune. Even if things will be hard, she wants to repair their marriage rather than throw it away.

Jaune begins to open his mouth- but Ruby stops him. Earlier it was him who needed to say what he needed to say- and she respected that. Now it's her turn to talk, and his to listen.

Ruby admits that she wanted their marriage to be a fairy tale- but not in the sense that fairy tales are always happy. Often they were quite dark indeed. But Ruby wants to believe in happy endings regardless, because it means that there's something to cherish and look forward to even in the bad times. The idea of fairy tales is never supposed to be about simply taking good times for granted and assume they'll last forever. They never do- and every fairy tale has a time- and that's why she hadn't thought her marriage was a fairy tale: she'd viewed her marriage as the _end_ of the fairy tale already lived. She'd thought she'd already gone through her dark time- the rescue romance, which she remembers not as a romantic and charming ideal courtship, but a time of fear and near-loss that made the victory all the sweeter. Nearly losing him back them made her all the more determined to protect him afterwards- and she can now see his perspective about why that isn't comforting. Perhaps she was conceited, to think that there was an end to the story and that it'd continue just as it'd ended on the wedding day- that life's challenges ends as neatly and finally as a story ends.

Far too late, she remembers something her father once told her that her mother, Summer Rose, once said: marriage is like a garden- as beautiful as you find it, it takes constant care to keep it alive. She didn't, and for that she's sorry.

Ruby will believe him about not having an affair, and hopes he can believe her about the same about her. But above all else, yes or no, stay or go, she wants him to believe in their children- theirs, not just hers. Not her children from a sordid affair, not the clinical products of some anonymous donor, but hers and Jaune's, because Jaune **_is_** their father as far as she's concerned. He's the one who was there for them, he was the one who raised them, and he was the one who tended them and cared for them in ways no one would have. That no one else did. No 'real man,' or Hunter, or even her. If there's any single person that they could be said to be's, it's Jaune's. Jaune is their father in the same sense that Summer Rose was a mother to Yang, and in the same way that Yang and Ruby are sisters. That's what she believes, and deep down she knows that's what he feels to. Even if he's forgotten- even if the last few years have made him doubt- she remembers that there was a time he loved them without reservation.

Even knowing what he knew- even fearing what he feared- she's never doubted he did the best he could, the best anyone could, to raise them. That the only revenge he ever took against her for the suspected affair was to live well and try to make them his own. He did his best to love them and make them love him, and he did better than he realized. Even if they don't express it well, even if their children act like children- immature and ungrateful and taking things for granted- they do respond to him in their own ways. If she had known he ever doubted that, if he'd ever told **_her_ ** he doubted they cared for him, she could have said something.

Explained to him just what their always-changing hair ornaments meant in Flower Language. Shared with him the things they told her but were too ashamed or afraid to admit to him- how they had felt isolated from their peers for entering Signal so young, how they were teased and bullied at school for being Teacher's Pets whenever they were close to him, how they wanted _him_ to be proud of **_their_** accomplishments without any hint of favoritism on his part despite entering Signal so early. Told him just why they were so dedicated to becoming Huntresses in the first place- because they were raised on stories of two lines of Heroes, Rose _and_ Arc, and that they wanted to become strong so that they could protect him when Mother wasn't around to do so herself. They _are_ his Roses. They take after him, including his flaws, because they are **his** Roses.

And even now they want to be- if Ruby's never tended the garden, and Jaune wasn't there to, who does he think took the first steps in mending the damage and of the Family Roses? Ruby lets the soil she's holding slip through her fingers, revealing what what is inside: not just the intact red rose, but three additional seeds waiting for time and care to grow and bloom again.

She won't blame him for not knowing what they felt- she shares as much blame as them for not sharing- but his doubt over them and the fact that he hurt them, physically and emotionally when he rejected them, is the one point she's really, truly, still angry over.

But she (still) loves Jaune, and wants to rebuild their marriage- if he wants to. Wants to, not just feels he should offer out of duty or promises, because if he's miserable their children will be miserable and it's not just about what she wants. Jaune's happiness will determine the family's happiness- and if they can't be happy together, then they aren't truly a family, blood or no blood.

But whether he does or not, whether he still wants to or not, she's sorry about this entire affair.

He is too, and he does too, and with that tight-throat confession Jaune and Ruby embrace as they finally understand each other and come to terms. Their children, brought back by Yang after she left earlier, stream into the garden as the Rose family reconciles, tears in all their eyes as they all apologize to each other even as they forgive each other.

Pyrrha who stood by the entire time without interrupting even as she lost the love triangle, gracefully sees herself out of the Rose Garden without a word. Her and Jaune's last exchange is a meeting of the eyes and Jaune whispering 'thank you' as she walks out the Rose Garden, and out of his life.

/

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Author Notes: End Climax. Key points- Jaune and Ruby are finally honest with each other. The Rose marriage is saved, in deed if not in name. Disbelief and angry responses are inevitable as Arkos shippers wage war for betrayal and how unreasonable it is that Jaune ultimately gets what he spent practically the entire fic wanting and striving for- the reconciliation of Lancaster. Pyrrha is forever alone.

There's two more updates to this story- the epilogue, and the planning notes/analysis/FAQ.


	10. Epilogue

Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY.

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The epilogue would be a letter written by Jaune, to Pyrrha, on a Sunday some time later. Jaune reveals what's happened since the Affair.

Jaune and Ruby have moved out of the city and to a small settlement on the frontier, part of their efforts to rebuild their marriage. They have a new house, bought half with her money and pretty much all of his that he had from the old job. It's smaller than the one that Ruby bought in Vale- but he likes it more, less empty when she's gone even if the house is uncomfortably small when she's not. He has plans to expand it even if it means building the extensions himself- though he knows he won't have to work on it alone. The new home also has a garden he and Ruby and the children have all taken to mending together, complete with the new Family Roses at the heart. The new Rose Garden has no walls, not even a privacy hedge- but every neighbor who's come by and seen it has been impressed, and they're so far from the city that he can see the stars at night and the moon wherever it is in the sky.

Things aren't as luxurious as they were pre-Pyrrha, but they're healthier and Jaune is happier. Jaune now works for Schnee Dust Corporation on the frontier, helping build and expand new settlements and maintain the roads between them. Even if he could have gotten a better position through Ruby's connections with Weiss, this one is a modest entry position he could have gotten on his own, one with a sort of productivity and visible accomplishment that helps him feel like he's making a difference and not just a sinecure. He's also a part of the town militia to defend against the occasional Grimm attack- but considering that Ruby is a full-fledged Huntress in the local area, they're rarely needed. She lets him do it anyway, but in exchange he's given up drinking, just one of the compromises they've made since the Affair.

Ruby has adjusted to things as well. Team WBY never did find the person who sent the Dear Jaune letter- but Jaune will believe Ruby when she says that it wasn't Cardin Winchester. She's no longer the ambitious and far-traveling Huntress who spent months at a time traveling the world. She has fewer, shorter trips- and when she does, she makes a point of video chats frequently. No more weeks or months on end without hearing from her- and she's taken up where Pyrrha left off, training him along with their children, who are home-taught now that there's no combat school around. He'll never be good- never even as good as his kids- but it's brought the family together and allowed him to help the kids fight off a beowolf attack when Ruby wasn't there.

And speaking of children... things have been more up than down with them. The children, who he's supposed to call his flowers (or his Roses) rather than 'the children' as part of the post-affair changes, are relieved that their parents are back together, but still shaken by the fights and revelations. It's less about any stigma of being a donor baby, not at all that he's not 'really' their Father, and everything to do with realizing that he doubted them, and their feelings towards him, to the point of resentment and worse. Ruby being home more has helped temper them, but now they're over-compensating to even imagined slights against him… though to be fair he's probably doing the same in regards to them. Jaune is more than a bit ashamed that he projected his doubts and fears onto them, even though they were only guilty of being, well, imperfect children that he raised, and asks Pyrrha for advice and if she thinks they'd benefit from a different environment for awhile. Something to do over a summer while he and Ruby have their fifteenth anniversary honey moon? Ruby has promised to take him to see the stars from every continent, even the ones without Kingdoms. He also asks Pyrrha- knowing how hard this will be for her to hear him ask but there's no one he trusts more- for her advice on broaching the topic of Ruby having another child. One, or two, or more that he can raise without the doubt lingering over his head for years. He'd like a boy to call his own- to call 'Arc'- who could carry on the Arc family name, and one day be strong enough to protect Ruby when and where Jaune couldn't. If they do- if he does- when it comes time to train the boy, would Pyrrha be willing to even consider…?

The implications are that Pyrrha and Jaune have been maintaining a correspondence, with Ruby's knowledge. It's close, familiar- and it ends with fond musing of their briefly intimate friendship, and a wondering of how things might have been different if they'd met earlier in life. Jaune even reveals that, contrary to what Pyrrha told Ruby, he did try to initiate something sexual- twice. Once after Blake, and later after quitting the school and telling his children that he was going home. Both times it was Pyrrha who refused it, refused the him who she said wasn't being himself, and both times she talked him through his emotional state to the decisions of what they actually came to. He wonders where he'd be if she hadn't done that- if she'd simply given him what he thought he wanted, rather than the resolution she knew he needed- but he's never remembered her more fondly than the way she composed herself when he couldn't. He's grateful that she didn't let him live a life of regrets, which he would have carried with him had they eloped outright rather than tried to make resolution with Ruby. He knows that doing so ended up denying Pyrrha her chance… but he also knows he wouldn't have been able to commit himself to her as fully as she deserved had he still been haunted by lingering guilt and nibbling doubts.

Jaune closes that while he may wonder what life could have been had things gone differently, it's thanks to Pyrrha that he's resolved to make the most of the life he does have, to keep moving forward just like she told him in the kitchen so long ago. It's thanks to her that he's re-found happiness in his life- which is what he always wanted- and he truly wishes her the same for her. He encourages her in her pursuit, knowing that she won't quit looking for her own happiness or give up over him, because he has faith in her. In the new Rose Garden, he's carved out a single exception to Ruby's One Rule, finally managed to grow one flower that isn't a rose: a nasturtium. A flower as red as any rose but which means 'victory.' He includes one in the letter, which he signs 'Forever Yours, Jaune.'

/

Fin

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Author Notes: Resolution- Jaune and Ruby are rebuilding their marriage and family, Jaune and Pyrrha remain friends (at a distance), and Jaune has found a sense of peace and happiness. This epilogue would have been posted the next Sunday of the finale, a week's pause to give time to catch breath and give a sense of the time passing.

The epilogue is a letter, rather than a direct encounter, to emphasize both the distance that has inevitably come between them since the reconciliation with Ruby- but that Pyrrha remains important to Jaune. Jaune writing his feelings into a letter is demonstrating Jaune finally overcoming his tendency to hide his feelings and how he's now able to express himself.

This is the end of the story, but tomorrow is my story analysis notes, themes and concepts... and a chance to answer any questions that remain.

Ask 'em while you got 'em.


	11. The Compost Heap (Planning Notes)

Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY.

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The Really Big Self-Analysis/Planning Notes/Themes and Stuff

aka

The Compost Heap

In which I talk way too much about stuff no one cares about.

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What is the Goal of this Fic?

This would be my preferred version of an 'affair' story, which is the affair that never quite happens. One that is emotional, rather than physical.

The goal of the affair was to write a conflict between characters in which there was no villain. While various characters would be unsympathetic at various points, ultimately none of them were to be unreasonable or antagonistic.

What this isn't is a love story: it's a story of a marriage crisis, but while it (roughly) follows a romance narrative beat structure, it's not really a love triangle. The prospect of a relationship is raised- it's incredibly important- but ultimately the story is 'Jaune trying to work through his troubles with Ruby,' while Pyrrha was the catalyst for development, both character and drama and character drama.

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The Meaning of the Title

People who followed my previous works, like Common Criminal, know that I'm a fan of Meaningful Words. Words, or scenes, that are not only important on their own- but worth coming back to and looking a new light later. Few words can be as significant as the title.

This story is "An Affair or Something." That's not just because this is part of the 'Or Something' series- my Jaune-centric AUs that focus on him not being uber-amazing like 90% of 'let's re-imagine Jaune' fics. It's because of what the 'Or Something' represents in all these works: not only a nod to the source material, but a sense of ambiguity and variability befitting Jaune's role as the changing element. Each story premise is right up there in the title… but there's always a bit of a 'something' so that the face value isn't the only way to take it.

"A Farmer or Something" is Jaune being a farmer… but also tracks Pyrrha. "A Crossdresser or Something" is, well, what it says on the tin- until the stinger adds a twist. "A Househusband Macho or Something" (which is the perfect antidote to this fic, btw- go read if you need a detox) is about Jaune the Househusband who's still a hero. And now, "An Affair or Something"…

Well, do you even know what an affair is?

There's the primary meaning of the word:

 _affair_ **:** a romantic or passionate attachment typically of limited duration : a secret sexual relationship between two people

This is the meaning that the reader was encouraged to take on the face of the story and the summary. Hey, Jaune is unhappy with Ruby. And there's Pyrrha. Gee, I wonder what's going to happen? Wink wink nudge nudge don't you feel clever for connecting the dots?

And the thing is- that's not a wrong perspective. There's an undeniable (and explicit) sexual tension for some time, and Jaune and Pyrrha are on the cusp of having an affair. And nearly elope. That's like an affair. Or something.

But then there's also the twist- the early tension that gets the full-Monty haymaker on an emotional level later on, when we learn Jaune is sterile. That rips open the early phases of the story, and suddenly the Title takes a new meaning: this isn't a story about Jaune's sexual relations… this is about _Ruby_. Ruby had an affair, or something, and that set the stage for the story.

But she didn't. (Probably.) And Jaune didn't. (Probably.) So why call it "An Affair or Something"? Wouldn't the better title be "A Tragic Misunderstanding or Something"?

Well, ignoring the far less dramatic ambiguity of that spoiler… consider the _other_ meaning of the word 'affair.'

 _affair_ **:** a matter occasioning public anxiety, controversy, or scandal

And there, my readers, you have it. I think anxiety, controversy, _and_ scandal nice summarize the events that happened, don't you?

So the title of the story is practically perfect. An affair over an affair that wasn't quite an affair, not what people (the reader or the cast) thought it was but a case of anxiety, controversy, and scandal all the same.

The entire story is the Affair in question- and everyone involved the participants.

Not to be too humble or anything, but… nailed it!

/

Themes and Such

There's technical and educated definitions for what themes are. I just consider them 'the unifying ideas that keep consistent over the story.'

/

Perspective

The role of perspective was a big piece of the story set-up and drama. The story isn't first-person, but the limited third-person perspective. That point of view, even in summary, is always shaded by the viewpoint of the character in question- which, for most of the story, means Jaune.

Perspective was the means by which the same things looked differently. Different perspectives provided contrast, gave better senses of the truth, and revealed how close love and misery were.

-Optimism/despair.

Over the course of the story, Jaune undergoes some significant changes… but the biggest changes aren't his contexts, but his point of view. Jaune the day before his suicide attempt and Jaune the day after his suicide attempt are still in the same circumstances: Ruby and the Children are still away, Blake and Yang are still supposed to be doing cerfew, he's no stronger than he was before, and it's not like Pyrrha wasn't his friend before he tried to kill himself. It's his perspective, not his situation, that changes.

Throughout the story, despair and hope are side by side, often in the same view, even if despair is the more common perspective. The start of this was the repeat of Jaune's marriage at the start: there's the marriage he loves, and the marriage he feels. They're the same marriage- but the take-aways are completely different. In the more blatant symbolism, this is what was shown with Ruby's dream: a fond memory, so close to a living nightmare.

By the end of the story, things do change… but it's also important to realize the things that don't. Jaune still has a wife who goes away on missions. Jaune's wife is still more impressive and accomplished than he. His children are still more than a match for him. And Jaune is still weak. But what changes more than the context is the perspective- Jaune and Ruby talk more on those trips, and so he has fewer doubts. Jaune still has a modest job- but he can see productive results. Jaune's kids are still kids- but he no longer doubts them. And even though Jaune is weak, he can see and feel how he contributes.

That's the difference between Jaune's despair and his eventual optimism.

-Truth and bias

The story isn't first-person, but limited third-person. The limits are the perspective of the viewpoint character- Jaune, in most cases. Jaune isn't aware of all the facts- doesn't know what other people are thinking- and so when Jaune assigns motivations or reasonings to people, he's really projecting his own views. This shades, and distorts, the reader's viewpoint. To Jaune, who carries heavy biases, Cardin sees him off with a 'damn smile.' But to Ruby- who resists that sort of projection when she stands up for Pyrrha in absentia- Ruby can see Pyrrha's smile for what it is- just a smile, not malevolence.

Jaune is an important, key, source of perspective on the conflict. Jaune's views matter- and if we didn't see his unhappiness from his perspective, many people might not have understood it. But Jaune isn't perfect- and relying on his biases blinds the audience to what Jaune does, and does not, consider important. Jaune considers Cardin Winchester very important. From a meta-angle, the audience knows that Cardin is the go-to antagonist for a villain in RWBY fanfiction, especially a Jaune antagonist. But Cardin is only important because Jaune believes he's important.

Whereas something that everyone else, especially the audience, believes is important- Jaune's sterility- it's not actually that big of a deal. The reason the sterility can be a plot twist, a late reveal, is because Jaune **doesn't** spend his time bemoaning that he's sterile and that the children aren't (biologically) his. He cares that Ruby lied to him all this time. He cares that Ruby did, and possibly is now, cheating on him. But he doesn't actually care that much that he's sterile, except in so much that he thinks it's the reason Ruby is cheating.

Ruby's got an imperfect perspective as well. But her biases, and her resistance to overly biased assumptions, help provide the context and contrast to realize the truth. To Jaune, Team WBY wasn't particularly friendly, or helpful, when they weren't outright antagonistic. To Ruby, they're well-meaning friends who rally and heroically help her. They're the same people- the same reasons- but in a different light. Ruby doesn't know all the things Jaune does- but her own perspective casts her in about the same justification as Jaune. She had reason to do the things she did. She also lacked information. She also needed to communicate more.

It's through keeping perspective, multiple perspectives, that the more objective truth of the situation comes out.

Gardening

Gardening is Jaune's key character trait in the story. It's his accomplishment, his skill, his validation, and his link to his family.

Being a gardener- raising plants and lives measured in weeks and months, planning on the scale of years, is an example of dedication. It's something that can seem easy- after all, plants can survive if you take a day off, right?- but is really a fair deal of work over time. Not everyone can do it- most don't even bother- but people who can do it well produce exceptional and unique results.

Jaune is that gardener. His Rose Garden is a work of art- something that, despite his weakness and limitations (his inability to grow anything but roses), he does well to the best of his ability. Jaune's beautiful garden, locked away in Ruby's home and hidden by the privacy walls, is a sense of how Jaune's talents and expression is limited by Ruby. The Rose Garden is his accomplishment, even as it's his burden, and it's something he would be able to take pride in were more people ever able to see it.

Gardening is also a link between Jaune and his family. He doesn't realize that it's already what he wanted/hoped aura and training would be- something to relate through. Ruby loves the garden- is upset when he neglects it, but cherishes her memories of it- but it's also something his children show interest in. It wasn't explicit in the summary, but the children wanting to help out and be involved in it is one of their subtle clues that they are interested in him. In chapter one there's a miss-it-if-you-blink reference that Ruby keeps the children from interfering in the Garden, then they go to Atlas to buy him tools for the Garden, when they return they offer to help him tend it, and when Jaune is gone and Ruby is fixated on Jaune it's the children try to tend to the garden by restoring and replanting the family Roses.

There's a big thematic link between the children and Jaune's gardening abilities, to be covered later, but ultimately the Garden is as much the link that binds the family together as aura, while gardening and being a gardener is an extended metaphor for Jaune's patience, perspective, and why he ultimately stays with the family.

-Responsibility and blame

An Affair or Something is not a happy story. It has a happy ending- if you aren't into Arkos- but it's not a happy story. There's a lot of misery all around, and it's got to be someone's fault, right?

Well, no. These weren't themes, so much as three guiding rules I kept in mind for the story.

-No villains.

Ruby says it outright, but let's go with authorial intent: there are no villains in this story. There might be the person you believe most responsible, there might be the people you dislike more, but ultimately there are no 'bad' people in the story: only imperfect people making wrong choices for reasonable reasons. Jaune is insecure and paranoid, to the point of causing scandal. Ruby is well-intentioned but careless, trying to fix everything but making things worse. The kids are, well, kids- a bit spoiled, a bit bratty, but ultimately careless more than contemptuous. Even Cardin isn't the villain: he's only antagonistic because Jaune antagonizes him first. He doesn't initiate the fight. Even if he'd be up to it, he doesn't pursue Ruby. Even if he doesn't respect Jaune, he's not out to break the marriage. There's no one person that can be blamed for everything that happens.

-No Innocents

The flip side of this is that while there's no one person who can be blamed, there's not a single person who is free from blame for how things went wrong. Everyone played a part- even the supporting cast who might have thought they were uninvolved. Ruby calling out all of Team RWBY not only for why they might have been behind the Dear Jaune letter- but also for how they contributed to things going worse (Weiss's job-discussion, Blake's failed surveillance, Yang encouraging the kids to go to Atlas). Even, or especially, the children- who are innocent in the matter of Ruby's initial affair, but whose immaturity and issues they wouldn't admit to Jaune fed his troubles and put fuel to the bonfire of the entire family.

-No malevolence

The key to all of this, to having an affair story with no villains and no innocents, was no malevolence. No one acted just to spite everyone else. Ruby wasn't a harpy trying to control Jaune and treat him like a doll. Jaune didn't hurt the kids in the fight because he hated them, or come back with Pyrrha in the end to rub the imminent elopement in Ruby's face. Pyrrha wasn't sabotaging the marriage, even if she would have benefited from it ending. This goes for the three key characters, but the supporting cast as well: Team RWBY, the children, even Cardin.

All of these points- no villains, no innocents, and no malevolence- were important in keeping away a sense of 'sides'- that there were good guys and bad girls and that there was a clearly right party in the affair vis-à-vis a clearly wrong party. The problem of the affair wasn't the people involved- it was the misunderstandings and lack of communication between those people.

-Moral of the Story

Call these the 'here's tips for better relationships

-Be honest and communicate with eachother

Trust is an important part of any relationship. Sounds trite, but it's true- especially if participants are separated by distance for some time. All of Ruby and Jaune's problems- all of them- could have been pre-empted, prevented, or easily solved just by talking to eachother. If Jaune had brought up adoption from the start, Ruby wouldn't have bothered sneaking to the fertility clinic. If Ruby had mentioned the fertility clinic, which she would have had Jaune confronted her, the trust wouldn't have been lost. If Ruby had shown interest in Jaune's friend, or the children talked their problems and feelings to Jaune, or Jaune talked his resentment of the kids to anyone, pretty much everything would have been resolved.\

A lack of communication can lead to misconceptions, and miconceptions that linger can turn into presumed lies and deceit. That's Bad.

-Have confidants (and friends)

The other piece of it, though, is that not everything needs to be shared. Sometimes you need to vent- or work through- or sometimes you have reasons for why you can't share everything. That where the importance of friends comes through. Emotional dependence is bad, unhealthy, and can be miserable. Having a support network you can trust- friends you can turn to when there are problems- is a key to both personal happiness and stability, but also a big help in attempting to fix problems. Even though she was the romantic rival, Pyrrha was critical for Jaune's growth and happiness. Even though they made things worse at first, Team WBY helped Ruby put together the facts and realize the issues and pushed her forward.

-Balance and moderation

As with a lot of things, extremes can be bad and disruptive. Marriages need to be based on trust- but have outlets for secrets in confidants. Jaune bounces between drinking way too much, but almost commits suicide during an enforced dry spell. The children love Jaune lots, but barely show it at all.

Finding the middle ground, the compromises, is the key.

/

Analyzing the Affair-

The basis of the affair, of the entire Ruby-Jaune marriage crisis, is based on the concept of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. For those who aren't familiar, the Hierarchy of Needs is a model of what's needed to achieve happiness, separated into different between mere survival and personal fulfillment. Think of a pyramid, with Happiness at the top.

Level 1 is physiological needs, the basic needs of survival. These are the base of the pyramid- obviously you can't be happy if you don't have food, water, or shelter.

Level 2 is 'safety': the sense of security of body, employment, resources, family, etc. If you're worried about losing basic things, you're unlikely to be happy.

Level 3 is 'love/belonging': friendship, family, and intimacy. The sense of not being isolated or alone.

Level 4 is 'esteem': self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, and respect _by_ others. Collectively these allow self-respect.

Level 5, 'self-actualization', is where people find happiness and contentment, and not just passion or pleasure: this is the point where abstract concepts such as morality, principles, and acceptance of facts come into play. Generally speaking, people who struggle with any of the previous levels can't stay this high for long.

The troubles in the Ruby-Jaune marriage is that Ruby and Jaune were on totally different levels. Ruby, hero extraordinaire who did all her character development and maturation at Beacon, she was a self-actualized super-girl flying high. She's strong, has friends and family, accomplishments to be proud of, a fulfilled sense of ethics and purpose, and love. She thought she had her happy ending- and she thought because she had it, Jaune had it too. But while Ruby is at level 5, Jaune is stuck at level 2. You can give physiological needs, and you can even give safety, but levels 3 and 4 aren't needs that can be given from the outside- they have to be felt by the subject.

Without his Beacon experiences and character development, Jaune utterly fails level 4, esteem: he has no respect, self or otherwise, in part because Ruby tries to give him everything he should want rather than let him achieve it himself. (Unlike in Househusband Macho, where Jaune thrives as a stay-at-home Dad because he's achieved self-respect at Beacon.) But while Ruby may be vaguely aware of that he's never had a chance to achieve something, and thinks that her loving him and helping him makes up for it, Jaune is actually drowning at level 3, 'love/belonging.' He has no friends, because they're all Ruby's friends first and foremost. Intimacy is challenged by Ruby's frequent and far-away trips away as a Huntress. And he lacks a confidant to keep his secrets.

But most of all, and this was the important big plot twist about sterility, Jaune sense of family is shattered: not only did he give up his family name which he had pride in, but Ruby's well-intentioned cover-up makes him doubt he's part of the new one. It might have been fine if the kids were closer to him, but Jaune suffers a disconnect from both his wife and the children. That reveal reveals that Jaune's not just struggling to reach level 3- with his fears about Cardin, he's actually struggling to stay at level 2, possibly even level 1. Everything that he has to meet his base needs- a job, a home, protection and family- they're all dependent on Ruby. If Ruby IS having an affair, if the children really snuck out to have a family reunion in Atlas, then how safe is he? If he lost everything he relied on Ruby for, what could he do if she took it all away? How would he even be able to provide for food, water, or shelter for himself?

His fears are wrong. His children had no such plan. And Ruby isn't a villain. In the entire story it would never be objectively implied that she doesn't love Jaune as the love of her life. Sure, she doesn't approve of his drinking habits, she's disappointed at the Cardin confrontation, and stressed after the camping trip, and angry in the final fight- but it's because, not despite, her love for him. But that's part of the problem: Ruby has plenty of love to spare, but Jaune is starving for respect. Ruby isn't giving it, and in some ways her attempts to help are robbing it.

And here's where Pyrrha comes in- not as amazon homewrecker, or liberator from an oppressive wife, but as a similarly lonely soul who offers Jaune the emotional needs he's been missing. She gives him a friend he can trust not to blab so that he can just vent. She gives him both physical and emotional intimacy, even if they never have sex. But she also helps him reach esteem by helping him succeed on his own terms with his own ability. She lets him fight a Beowolf, even after he's hurt and Ruby would have stepped in. She teaches him basic self-defense and aura so that he can try to engage with the children on their own terms. And she cares about him enough not only to stop him when he's suffering a breakdown (the near suicide of burning the Rose Garden), but respects him enough to refuse to take advantage of his emotional volatility in those hard moments. Thanks to Pyrrha, Jaune goes from a barely above Level 2 of 'Safety' to reaching into level 5 of self-actualization. Jaune is becoming that better person he always could have been.

That's why Pyrrha has a real chance of an affair- but in the end that's also why she's the one that 'loses.' The problem of making someone a better love interest is that better lover interests tend to be less inclined to cheat or have an affair. If she wanted to, Pyrrha could have settled for level 3 or level 4 Jaune- could have pushed him to accept the break from his family, had sex, and run off and had an Arkos Ending. But in refusing to exploit his turmoil and helping him become self-actualized, Jaune becomes the sort of person to whom morality and acceptance of facts matter as much or more than emotional impulses. Before he can go off with Pyrrha, has to at least try to find some sort of resolution with Ruby. Jaune, self-actualized with the return to 'Jaune Arc' and above the insecurities that plagued him, is able to deal with Ruby on her own level- and that's why they're able to reconnect and reconcile.

So in a sense Pyrrha loses because she's the better woman- or just as good a woman as Ruby, and self-actualized herself. Though less in focus, Pyrrha is also someone who struggles in level 3, emotional belonging. Jaune helps her with that- and because she already has level 4 more or less mastered, she too is in the self-actualized level of considering morals and principles. If she had wanted, she could have ruined Ruby's marriage- could have seduced Jaune at a camping trip, or after during the fight, or let herself be seduced on the final Friday- but instead she helped Jaune reason rather than emote, and did the honorable thing of trying to help him find resolution with Ruby. Which succeeded, which kinda means she failed, and certainly hurts, but it fits her character.

Fits the canon characterization of all three of them, I think. Ruby is a good girl who tries hard, but not always the most insightful into why other people are concerned. Jaune is a good guy, but is struggling for respect, self and otherwise. And Pyrrha wants to help Jaune, even if in the end he doesn't want her.

/

Enough sociology. Why make something so depressing that I refuse to write it in full?

The idea of the 'Ruby relationship that fails' is some of my thoughts on the pitfalls and drawbacks of the fairytale happy ending and romances for heroes (and heroines) in super-hero-esque genres. I'm a pretty big believer in the general idea of the Hierarchy of Needs, and it shows a lot of the emotional balance needed for a hero/non-hero relationship, on both sides. Ruby, aside from having a soft-spot for Lancaster shipping, made an ideal example of how good intentions and love don't necessarily make for good sound relationships. That especially true in a relationship with a severe power imbalance- Ruby is super and does super things, so how is Jaune supposed to get respect?

There are no villains in the story- not even Cardin Winchester- and no one I'd even call bad. The worst people in the story in terms of character are the kids, who are less malicious and more simply careless with the maturity one should expect of empowered pre-adolescent kids. Right up there with them is Jaune himself. Jaune's not a bad guy, but he's the worst guy in the story: he lets fear and paranoia drive him, and yet if he had ever voiced them aloud the most serious issue would have been resolved instantly.

Jaune wasn't simply ignorant about key facts- he was downright wrong as a judge of character and when assigning motivations to people, both friends and family. He believed that none of Ruby's friends would have supported him against Ruby- but both Blake and especially Yang are willing to confront Ruby over what she did to him. Had he told _anyone_ of Team RWBY that he knew he was sterile, even Weiss or especially Ruby herself, they would have come out with the truth immediately. And his children, while disrespectful, never, ever hated him or wanted to replace him: that was entirely projecting his fears onto them. You can argue Ruby shouldn't have lied in the first place- or that Jaune was afraid what might happen if he did challenge her- but what Jaune did with that fear was all him.

Ruby's not the villain- not even particularly unreasonable considering Jaune's actions. If Ruby has a major character flaw, it's the implicit anti-silver-lining of heroic fiction like the fairy tales she wants to live: in order for the day to be saved, someone needs to be in trouble and in needing of saving first. In this scenario, Jaune is Ruby's fairytale rolled into one package: someone she rescued, protected, provided for, could love, could be loved by, and a lot of other fantastical things... that do things for her, but don't help him as much.

Jaune drives the story, and he's the guy who shows how and why not everything is great in paradise. He gets a lot of the pressures and fears that you rarely see or consider in the hero genre: insecurities, inadequacies, and the impotence (litearal and figurative) of being the weakest person in a relationship. Super-normal relationships are often glamorized, but I know at least for me it'd be hard to be in one if I didn't have an independent source of self-validation and self-respect. His wife may love him, but he doesn't believe she (or anyone else) respects him, and that's why he's attracted to Pyrrha: she's just as far above him as Ruby, but unlike Ruby's fairy tale marriage fantasy in which she's more than happy to fix any problems for him, Pyrrha empowers him to address them himself- even to the point of confronting Ruby directly about the affair and seek resolution rather than simply run off and elope with Pyrrha.

Jaune is not the singular victim in Affair, the victim to Ruby's carelessness-he's as much to blame for their marriage falling apart as she was- Ruby made a little white lie, but he's the one who never brought it up, who let it naw on him for years, and who never mentioned or addressed the root causes of his unhappiness. He's not the best husband, or the best dad, or the best person at the start. He's not _bad,_ but he's a flawed person going through a midlife crisis, and it's about as graceful as one would expect. It's his failures more than Ruby's that drive the story: he doesn't communicate his actual fears or concerns with the people who could fix things, he doesn't make clear what he wants, and he makes excuses about his difficulties with the kids even if it's really no one's fault. It's his actions that cause the Affair, and by the same mark it's his development and self-improvement that resolves it.

Ruby is Jaune's partner in both complicity and victimhood. Some people see Ruby as the one at fault, because she was making Jaune unhappy without realizing why or what she was doing to him, and blowing off his concerns about Cardin. I think this is reasonable, if not quite fair, because the reader has an advantage that Ruby doesn't- seeing Jaune's feelings, and not just what he expresses.

Some people wouldn't see Ruby as at all at fault, because on the face of things she's not at fault at all- she's faithful, a hero, goes out of her way to try to help him with his problems, and so on. The worst she does besides lie about fertility treatment is not believe him over Cardin. And it's quite reasonable for her to do so, because she knows there was no affair or anything improper. She _shouldn't_ abandon a friend solely based on Jaune's paranoid fears- fears which, no matter how reasonably based, were both wrong and the basis never admitted. In a sense, Ruby didn't make anything worse- Jaune did, letting his insecurities and paranoia drive his conclusions.

But, and this is important, Ruby didn't _help_ the issue either. To go back to the end-scene 'marriage is a garden' metaphor: she saw her marriage as a beautiful garden, but didn't tend to it- she ignored the weeds, never noticed the rot seeping in, and when she realized something was wrong she tried to hack at the leaves rather than find the root of the problem. She was a good person but a bad gardener, and while she wasn't an unfaithful spouse she could have been a better wife.

Hopefully that conveys the intent of an affair with no villains.

/

Onto story symbolism and devices

/

The Rose Garden: The Jaune-Ruby Marriage

Think a small courtyard that a nice house is built around: tall walls that can feel claustrophobic, but are probably intended to feel protective and separate it from the city. An isolated area of peace and beauty. It'd have a building and bench in the center, in which a special planter with roses would be as a centerpiece, one colored rose per member of the family. With the rest of the garden being arranged with different kinds and arrangements of roses. Jaune runs the garden, and Ruby's One Rule is that it can only have roses (in part because he fails to grow anything else and she didn't want him to keep failing).

Some people believed the garden was symbolic of Jaune. That's not quite wrong, but it's not quite right either. The garden is living metaphor for the state of Jaune and Ruby's _marriage_. It (the marriage and the garden) is the one thing Jaune can claim as his own and be proud of- but it's also something both beautiful and isolating at the same time. High privacy walls intended to provide peace from the city make it feel like a prison, even as his beautiful wife tried to protect him from the world by keeping him safe at home. It's something he's proud of but almost no one knows exists or will ever see. Ruby's One Rule that everything else about the garden is his to control is supposed to be empowering, but the restriction (a restriction to spare his own feelings from failure) is galling and oppressive. Ruby leaves it to him as a sort of responsibility to take pride in, but at the same time almost no one else knows or ever sees it- and if no one else believes in a garden (or a marriage), can you really claim it? The open-sky is supposed to allow a beautiful view of the moon, but without the moon all it does is show how there's no stars in the sky to shine down on it.

The state of the garden changes over time to reflect the state of the marriage: it's young and vibrant at the opening when they're just married, while stifling and entrapping in the less optimistic take. It begins to be neglected as Jaune spends more time with Pyrrha. Jaune begins to tear it down and nearly burns it down the night he almost commits suicide, which is also the night Pyrrha barges into the most private part of his home and his life uninvited, and which is also the point Pyrrha begins to take a more assertive step in their relationship that lead to the almost-affair. The garden is in tatters and left unattended while Ruby is gone, and torn when she comes back and finds him missing, and left unattended even after she and Jaune fight and she has a week to mend it. The fight which sees Jaune reject his children and destroy the centerpiece with the family flowers is when it all seems ruined. But it's the children who start to mend it by saving the surviving Family Rose and planting new ones, leading to Ruby and Jaune's reconciliation. When Ruby and Jaune reconcile and move and restart the garden, they do so together in ways that change the things that weighed down on Jaune. No walls to hide it or Jaune, stars in the night sky, and two gardeners to tend it- and the relaxation of the one rule, which leads to a flower to remember Pyrrha even as the rest of the garden remains roses.

Alcohol: Dependence, Comfort, and Pyrrha

Alcohol pops up several times across the story, in positive and negative ways. Pre-story, Jaune's borderline alcoholism is his crutch for his failing marriage with Ruby. It's not a pretty thing- he's drinking his sorrows away rather than dealing with them- and it leads to some bad moments- particularly the night with Cardin. But even if it's a crutch and not pretty, it's not an entirely bad thing either- crutches are useful because they're needed at times, and the time Ruby tries to force Jaune to give it up, just as she tries to keep him from Pyrrha, is his lowest point in the series. The time Jaune runs out of drink, the third day after Ruby leaves with Cardin, is the time he needs one most and nearly kills himself. It's not healthy, but the alcohol is the symptom, not the problem.

Pyrrha is closely tied with the idea of alcohol- both of his tastes (switching from beer early on to wine with her) and in the effect she has on him. Pyrrha is the idea of 'drinking in moderation'- she helps Jaune relax, to loosen up and talk his problems out and admit things he wouldn't otherwise be willing to do sober. She gives him courage and comfort, but knows when enough is enough and when to hold back. Pyrrha not only compliments alcohol- in some cases she replaces it. When Jaune spends time with Pyrrha, he's drinking less out of need and more socially. Comfort, rather than reliance.

As a final note about the role of alcohol as a crutch: there are only two points in the story that Jaune goes an extended period without a drink. The first is the camping trip with Pyrrha, where he's living the dream and is intoxicated with her instead. The other is the epilogue when he's sobered up and given up drinking for Ruby, a symbol of him giving up Pyrrha as well. In both cases he's with one or the other, the woman taking the place of alcohol, and he's moved beyond the need or dependence for alcohol.

Stars: Hope, Dreams, and Faith

A lesser theme. The presence of stars ties to the hopes, dreams, and optimism that Jaune had and lost since his youth. In the city, where Jaune is stuck safe and sound, the light pollution blocks them from sight. In the wilderness, where Huntresses like Ruby go out and do what he only dreamed of, the stars are bright and always present. But it's dangerous out there, and so people who are safe will never see the stars and wish on them.

Jaune not seeing the stars from the Rose Garden represents how he's lost hope in his marriage. Pyrrha taking him out of the city on the camping trip to see them is important to him because it's giving him back that part of his youth that he lost. She has faith he'll be fine even in the dangers of the wilderness with Grimm around. She's been teaching him to fight, and offers him the first chance of rediscovering his dream of being a Hunter of some sort. And she's giving him a chance to have his wish come true- whether it be fighting Grimm or having her.

Obviously Ruby and Jaune's final move to the frontier where they can see the stars is part of the compromise and reformation of their marriage. It's not the wilderness- not the total abandonment of the protections and constraints of the Kingdom- but it's enough that Jaune is able to have faith and optimism in his marriage with Ruby.

Flower Language: Chapters and The Children

This one is a bit hard to explain since it didn't factor in the plot much, but- Flower Language would be a major theme of the chapter naming convention, and tied heavily into the children. For those who don't know, Flower Language is using certain types and colors of flowers to communicate message. A single full blooming red rose, like the one to survive the fight in the Garden and that Ruby showed when she made her decision, means 'I Still Love You.' A nasturtium, which is red like Pyrrha, is a flower for 'conquest' or 'victory.'

Flowers are a good way for symbolism, if a bit awkward to put into a story in parts. A general intent would have been to name specific story arcs after gardening-related themes, while using specific flowers and colors in different chapters. Probably an end-chapter 'Flower Language of the Day' segment. So instead of having Pyrrha pull out a stephanotis to give to Jaune, at the end of the chapter in which Pyrrha proposes Jaune to elope to Sanctum with her, you'd get: "Stephanotis- Happiness in Marriage; Desire to Travel." It wouldn't work perfectly- some chapters would get repeats, others might have nothing- but it'd keep the garden theme.

Moving onto the children… it doesn't reflect well in a broad summary, but the children would have been heavily tied into plant themes and imagery. They are 'budding' adolescents. Their limbs are like stalks. They make like trees and leaf to Atlus. (Blame that pun on Aunty Yang.) And so on. And they would have had flower-themed names- of flowers that had multiple meanings both good and bad, to reflect their role as both subjects of Juane's positive interest (because he wants to bond with them and for them to respond to him) and frustration (because he resents them when they don't see to and suspects they aren't his). They're a bit of a metaphor for Jaune's limited green thumb- it'd be raised a few times that the only plants he can grow are his own roses, and that nothing else responds to his attentions. The fact that the children don't respond to him is representative to his fear of how they aren't 'his' Roses.

Jaune's issue with raising them would be cast in terms of a jealous gardener- someone upset at the idea that he's nurturing and taking care of another man's seed and not his own. Likewise, the issue of sterility is important to Jaune because knows he has no seeds to grow, which haunts him as a gardener/father/man. But it's that same gardener mentality that ultimately leads Jaune to stay at the end- Ruby's comments about how the children do respond to him, that they are 'his' Roses, gives him the faith and desire to see through the bad season, just as a gardener doesn't give up just because it's winter.

Though they don't have all that many appearances, one of the distinguishing parts of the children would have been that of an ever-changing flower pin in the girl's hair. It would be a setting-appropriate example of flower language- but also a sign that they care more for Jaune than he realize. Which they always do- but the children, in addition to being immature children, have as hard a time expressing themselves honestly as Jaune does- a subtle way in which they take after him, and not just Ruby.

In the scene when they don't stand up for Jaune as he's humiliated by their classmates, it would be cast in terms of 'they wilted' and they'd show up later with a flower headpin meaning 'I'm sorry,' even if they're too awkward to say it. When they return with the gift of seeds, they'd be wearing something to indicate contrition. During the week of the fight, their pieces would indicate fear and hope where appropriate. When Jaune and Ruby reconcile and the children come in, there'd be a 'forgiveness' hairpin. A hairpin is easier to describe without explaining than dropping random flowers into the prose (or dialogue)- and pointing out that the hairpins are Jaune's gift to them would be a way to subtly indicate that they treasure something from him, even as they verbally don't want to be associated with him at school.

Though the children are cast unsympathetically throughout much of the story, it's important to understand that they aren't malevolent or malicious- they're simply kids going through a phase, and have reasons of their own that they don't want to share, and it's Jaune's perspective and biases that taint the innocuous and ignore the good. It'd be hard to demonstrate in-story- it'd have to be by non-Jaune characters like Ruby (who they are close to) or Yang- but it's not the kids don't like him. It's that they have a hard time connecting with him in turn and expressing themselves, something they take after him.

Yes, they like Hunters with aura- because they're kids in a Hunter family with _two_ family lines that they take pride in, including the Arc side. Yes, they aren't impressed by Jaune's attempts to learn to fight- because, like their mother, they're better at it and they'd rather protect him than let him be hurt. Yes, they don't like to associate with him openly at school- because they're kids who don't like to be embarrassed, and because (like Jaune) they don't want people to think they only get in because of nepotism and favoritism. Yes, they stand by when Jaune is put in a tree… because they're kids, not brave, and they know it's wrong and are very sorry. Yes, they ran off to Atlas without permission- in a quest for a make-up/apology gift. Yes, they said it was a family thing… the _Arc_ family.

And then there's the things Jaune simply doesn't know because they don't tell him. They never confess or confide to Jaune that they're bullied at school as Teacher's Pets if they are close to him. They never confess their desire- and utterly fail the opportunity- to protect him. They have their own desires to prove themselves and have accomplishments without him doing things for them.

Are they good at communicating that? No, not really- which is a point. Jaune does unto them what Ruby does to him: misunderstand what they try to say, and dismiss or ignore what they do. Because the children do try to reach out to him: with their flower hairpins, with their apology gift, with their outreach to 'Daddy' when he and Ruby have their first real fight, and at the school after, including asking him to come home. And- this was more subtle- they're first ones to show an interest in helping him maintain the Rose Garden. When Jaune and Ruby are fighting- when neither parent is taking care of the Rose Garden- it's the children who clean up the Family Roses, preserving Ruby's Rose. They want the family to survive- and it's that gesture that convinces Ruby to try for reconciliation.

Unfortunately Jaune is as receptive to them as Ruby was to him. Once again, it's a two-way street of blame and communication and forgiveness. They could have been clearer. They shouldn't have done some things. But Jaune shouldn't have done other things.

In the end, Jaune's relationship with the children is reflective of his trouble with the garden and his marriage as a whole. It's a conflicting bundle of love and resentment, but ultimately gives way to something better. It's not that he was a bad father, or them bad children- they were just being late bloomers, and it's through patience and cultivation (and a bit of help from Ruby, who, despite all the other issues, actually **_does_** help improve his relationship with the kids across the story) that they open up and bloom for him. Which they always would, because they were _his_ Roses.

/

And that's about it. Symbolism out the wazoo. So time for some final thoughts- like 'awesome ideas that didn't make it.' Some ideas I had, or that other people had but I liked, but which ultimately weren't right for this story.

One- Ruby actually cheated

Why it'd be awesome: well, maybe not awesome, but pretty early on people were hating on Ruby for how miserable Jaune was, and were hoping Pyrrha would win. Ruby cheating would have been the vindication, and the opening for Jaune to jump ship with the moral high ground.

This wasn't impossible. I considered at one stage keeping it highly ambiguous about whether Ruby had an affair or not. The narrative summary, rather than saying 'Ruby reveals', which implies objectivity, would have hedged things in terms of 'Ruby claims,' or 'Ruby denies, of course.' Just as Jaune ultimately says it doesn't matter if she cheated or not, he'll approach repairing the marriage the same regardless, it would have been ambiguous if Ruby never had done such a thing or if she had and was just upset that she'd been caught. It would have applied in both directions: that maybe Ruby really did have an affair, but still wanted to be with Jaune, while perhaps Jaune actually did sleep with Pyrrha, but still wanted to be with Ruby, and so they both lied and both agreed to believe the other's lies.

Why it didn't work out: too close to making Ruby the villain, and subverted the theme of honesty. If Ruby had an affair, much of the dynamic of the ending would be changed. The significance of mutual forgiveness and reconciliation after misunderstandings would have been lost if one of them really was guilty. Keeping the truth ambiguous would only mar the message, and distract from other possible elements.

Two- Arkos ending

Why it'd be awesome: because Pyrrha is a champ, and key to Jaune finding happiness. Because she wasn't just a nice girl, but a good woman, and she saved Jaune from death and worse. Because, considering the troubles Jaune went through with Ruby, it's easy to feel that Ruby doesn't deserve him and that Pyrrha earned it.

Why it didn't work out: because a key premise of An Affair Or Something is self-actualization and forgiveness for assumed wrongs and mistakes. Both worked against Jaune actually abandoning Ruby over what was ultimately a series of misunderstandings. On the first part, self-actualization, the characters develop closer to their Beacon selves by the end of the story. Ruby goes from a distant, virtuous figures of questionable decisions to someone more personable, less secure, but unquestionably sincere. Jaune goes from insecure to confident and self-accepting. And Pyrrha… Pyrrha, like in canon, goes back to being the girl who would do the right thing for the guy she loves, even if he didn't choose her. It's falling back in line with their canon character developments.

But the non-canon part- the emphasis on the idea and theme of forgiveness- this was important for a story about an Affair built around misunderstandings, where everyone was guilty of misinterpretations. Ruby wasn't cheating. Jaune didn't cheat. Pyrrha wasn't a home-wrecker. In coming to terms with what had happened- and forgiving each other- the conflict is resolved… but at the same time, the basis for Arkos is removed. Yeah, Jaune could be happy with Pyrrha… or he could be happy with Ruby, who he's spent most of the story trying to be happy with, and who he has real reasons to stay with now that the air is cleared.

Three- Pyrrha is a figment of Jaune's imagination

Why it'd be awesome: because for the first half of the story or so, it'd be perfectly feasible. It's not that Jaune has made a new friend: it's that Jaune has hit so low a low that he has an imaginary friend to help him through the misery. The reason Ruby never asks about it, the reason Blake and Yang don't see her enter the home, is because she doesn't exist. Jaune simply walks out of his home into the wilds that weekend, suicide by Grimm rather than by self-immolation… and survives. With delusions even as he heals.

Why it didn't work out: because that was never the plan. Just an amusing thought someone pointed out in the reviews. The real reason Blake and/or Yang don't stop Pyrrha from entering the home and the Rose Garden is because they weren't there, relying on the threat of observation to keep Jaune in line. Well, that or…

Four- the Dear Jaune letter writer was from Team RWBY

Why it'd be awesome: because there'd be a hidden actor trying to ruin Ruby and Jaune's marriage… just not who anyone suspected. Some (or all) of Team RWBY wants Ruby and Jaune to be separated- because Jaune's not good enough for Ruby, so that Ruby can have someone she deserves, or even out of some misplaced jealousy that Ruby put family before them.

Pretty sure I went through this in enough detail about 'how,' but there was a point I seriously considered Team RWBY as (hidden) potential antagonists, with each one of them potentially being behind it and one of them (never determined) actually behind it. Yang had the least reason/least thought, besides a general 'Jaune isn't good enough for my precious Sis'- though if Ruby had been cheating on Jaune, then Yang's motivation would have been to break the marriage so that Jaune wasn't trapped and free to go with someone who would be faithful to him. Blake would have been the anonymous, 'helpful,' friend: she noted the clues, followed Jaune and Pyrrha around, and took the photos as evidence and ultimately gave it to Ruby anonymously. Weiss was… well, it never got past 'random musing,' but if she wasn't 'Ruby's too good for him and could do better,' Weiss would have been the jealous White Rose shipper. Weiss implicitly has an unhappy marriage, and would have wanted her previous closeness (or more) with Ruby, and what better way than by providing the basis for a divorce? Ruby would be heart broken, Weiss would offer her support, and White Rose and Arkos could both ship in different directions, happily ever aft- yeah, no.

Why it didn't work out: need I mention 'bad idea'? And that this story has no villains? Putting anyone from Team RWBY as the author of the Dear Jaune letter would have been putting a bad girl on the front and center target list. None of them had the role, the buildup, or even the reason to do so secretly- they'd be honest with Ruby outright if they knew of the affair. Making them the villain, aside from distracting from the importance of 'forgiveness' and 'reconciliation' that the story was going towards, would have introduced massive character tension late in the story, for no real gain, significant thematic loss, and major distraction. The story's already depressing enough- it doesn't need to needlessly slander the supporting cast.

Five- Ruby was sterile

Why it'd be awesome: this idea was part of how Ruby should be played a bit more sympathetically later on, as well as a hint of a tie-in to the 'Weiss wants White Rose' idea. In short- while Jaune may or may not have actually been rendered sterile by the pre-story events, what he didn't know is that **_Ruby_** was rendered sterile by the same event. Ruby always wanted children with Jaune, but was afraid what (insecure) Jaune might do if he knew she couldn't conceive. So she and Weiss go to a fertility clinic for Ruby's sake- Ruby is a surrogate mother for her own children. The egg donor is ambiguous, just like the sperm donor- on one hand it might be Yang (to help ensure Blond hair, to make Jaune be the credible father, and help give basis for Jaune's belief that RWBY was in on it), but in the abandoned 'White Rose' angle the egg donor was Weiss, who in that twisted aborted arc would have seen the children as 'hers and Ruby's.' (Again- did I mention it was a bad idea?) Ultimately, Ruby's pregnancy is still a cover up- but it's a different mis-interpretation on Jaune's part. In fact, the real twist might have been that Jaune was the father- but it was Ruby that wasn't the (biological) mother.

Why it didn't work out: thematic simplicity on the idea of 'Jaune's Roses,' with a bit of dislike for how it shifted the meta-guilt and blame around. It's not that it's a bad idea- but it didn't make things better on a thematic level. On the first side, the idea of Jaune only being able to cultivate roses- the children are metaphorical roses, because they are Ruby Roses children and thus Roses. It's not that maternal surrogacy was bad, but if they hadn't been Ruby's biological children it would have countered the 'can only grow roses' motif, which would likewise have undercut Jaune's success in the epilogue in growing Pyrrha's flower. In a similar sense, the 'jealous gardener' motif depended on them not being 'his' seeds- which was the reason Jaune was ultimately sterile. Whereas if they are from his seed, then Jaune not demonstrating the growth to overcome the fear and paranoia of accepting 'his' children.

On the blame side, the idea shifted some of the meta-assessment and blame for the affair away from Ruby and back onto Jaune. If Ruby is sterile and kids are Jaune's, then Jaune's repudiating of his own children is both less sympathetic and less understandable. Rather than 'he had reason to think she cheated, but took it out on innocents,' it would have been 'he had no real reason to think she cheated, but took it out on his own kids.' And if both of them are sterile, then it contrasts Ruby and Jaune's handling of the situation- Ruby treats them like they're her own, while Jaune rejects them, even though they're both on the same level. But by having Ruby be fertile, but Jaune be sterile, we not only get the appropriate sort of power dynamic: Jaune is impotent, weak, and feels a failure of a man, Ruby is strong and fertile- but Ruby's flaw of trying to decide what's best for Jaune gets to play in full force. Ruby doesn't have to deal with the perspective that Jaune struggles with, Ruby can't quite empathize and thinks it doesn't matter, and Ruby makes a choice for Jaune's own good, thinking she knows better than him while underestimating his own resilience. That, in my view, works better to represent the dynamic of Ruby and Jaune's relationship: Ruby having everything, all the ability, while Jaune feels he can't contribute (even to creating his own child).

It's not that idea is bad- but it'd be trading one sort of 'feels' for a roughly equivalent sort, that wouldn't even have the merit of tidy symbolism to be organized around. It would be a twist for a twist's own sake, rather than advancing the themes or conflict.

/

The NSFAQ

(The Not-So-Frequently-Asked-Questions)

Here are some things people had confusion on or wanted to know, that wasn't addressed otherwise or may have been unclear.

-How long does the entire affair last?

Not including the prologue or epilogue, the vast majority of the events take place over three weeks: the week of Jaune's attempts (and failures) to improve the marriage leading up to the party, the week of Ruby's trip, and the week of the schism (starting Monday with the first fight, with the resolution being that weekend).

The ambiguous period, which is deliberate, is the first arc period for which Jaune and Pyrrha are drinking buddies who meet outside of the bar to socialize. Jaune doesn't exactly go to the gym for a week, take a self-defense class, and think he can show off aura. This is the point at which post-a-day would have been used to summarize an ambiguous amount of time, rather than posts-a-day to convey all the events happening on a single day.

-What gender are the children?

At least one of them is a girl, but the second is reader preference. It'd be canonized in a full written work, probably, but there's some advantages to ambiguity in a summary. And the fact that the two are always together- like peas in a pod- kind of makes them a single character in effect. Which they originally were, except I thought the 'second child' was important both to emphasize the severity of Ruby's deception, and to prove Jaune's ability in raising Roses.

But personally I prefer thinking of them as two daughters. Besides fitting the flower laungauge headpiece thing better, two daughters would better fit the 'take after Ruby' dynamic at the first, both in the 'more talented huntress fanatics,' but also the 'really want to protect Jaune, but aren't good at it.' You could have a boy, sure- in fact, having a somewhat effeminate boy who wears the flower hairpiece anyway would be a reason for him to be teased at school and part of the distance with jaune- but wouldn't that be distracting? Too much for a summary, at least. The other advantage is daughters is that it gives a bit more meaning to Jaune's desire to have another child- a son to call his own as Arc.

-Do the children go to Beacon or Signal? (How old are they?)

The children are students at Signal, where Jaune works. They're young students. Their age is deliberately vague, but they're definitely younger than Ruby is in S1: very early adolescents, possibly 12 or 13. If you think that's too young… well they got in early, perhaps even due to pulling strings.

-Why does Weiss refuse to reveal the donor?

Because it's irrelevant. She knows Ruby did not cheat during the conception of the children. Putting a face and a name would make a target, but would only be a distraction. The donor would have no clue about the affair in question, and have no means, reason, or relevance to resolving it.

-Did Cardin find out about the children before the Fight?

No. The only people who know about the Children's parentage are Jaune, Ruby, and Weiss. Even Pyrrha doesn't know until after the fight, when Jaune explains.

-Who sent the Dear Jaune letter?

No one, or everyone, or a member of Team RWBY, or someone else in the cast, or someone never mentioned at all.

I'm not telling, because like the sperm donor, it's ultimately irrelevant. The sender was never important- it would only serve to put a face for a villain in a story where there is no villain. What was important was the truth, and the misconceptions, that were brought to light- those secrets, not the letter, was what was destroying the marriage.

Unlike the children genders, this is something that would never be canonized, never be sure. You can believe any person you want. It could be anyone in the cast. Or it could be none of them- just some anonymous person with their own designs, but who were so far out of the concerns of Jaune and Ruby that the sender never crossed their minds.

-Is Ruby over-protective of Jaune because of atonement for what she did to him in the past (cheating/deception)?

Kinda sorta not really. Ruby doesn't feel guilty about the donor deception until she's caught, because for so long she thinks she pulled it off. Ruby has three main reasons for being protective of Jaune- Jaune's weak, she loves him, and the Rescue Romance of the Beacon years. The first is a statement of fact. Aura or no, training or no, Jaune in this timeline will never be a remarkable, or even average, hunter. It's just too late, though his sense of self-respect is tied to trying. The second is Ruby's nature. Ruby wants to help people because she likes helping people, and she doesn't like the people she loves being upset because she loves them. Simple as that.

The Rescue Romance is something else. To Jaune, it was that superhero-normal relationship that he found himself in, in which someone so far out of his league kept saving him, fell in love with him, and it was the one adventure he ever had. It was a gift/chance/opportunity who grasped and never wanted to let go. Jaune assumed that Ruby saw it in the same way- a charming fairy tale romance in which he was the prize.

She didn't. Ruby remembers the Rescue Romance much as she'll likely remember An Affair or Something: a hard time and frightening scare in which the one she loved was nearly lost forever. Yes, Jaune was hers at the end- appreciated all the more for the scare- but she never wanted him in danger in the first place, and never wants him in danger again.

-Do I prefer to write heart-wrenching pieces like 'Affair' and 'Common Criminal', or light-hearted ones like 'Househusband Macho'?

Neither. I don't really have a preference, per see. I consider it easier to plan out a drama- I couldn't do a long comedy- but in terms of enjoyment in terms of writing, I don't have much of a preference- but then, I don't see the stories the same as most people do either, since I have the authorial perspective and meta-knowledge. I find 'Common Criminal' cathartic, not depressing. I find 'Affair' generally depressing, despite how it ends, because I can envision the weeks of buildup. 'Househusband' was and is the perfect antidote to 'Affair'- a story of an already self-actualized Jaune being a good house husband- and I'll admit I've read it more than once since writing 'Affair.'

(And if you haven't yet- I recommend you do! And leave a review at how well it works as a detox! [/shameless self plug])

I think it's important to have emotional balance, and I try to do a variety of genres and such as an intellectual exercise of sorts. My next three projects will certainly not be the tears-in-the-eyes sort of reading that 'Affair' and 'Common Criminal' were. That's not to say there won't be 'a bat made of solid feels' to hit you with- but they won't be dramas.

-(Implicit follow up) What are your next projects?

The next one, already written, is 'Oum Made a Farmer'- which will be the semi-sequel/extended part-two of "A Farmer or Something." I actually wrote this one awhile ago. Guaranteed to be posted. Consider it my apology gift to Pyrrha.

The one most likely to posted second, even if there's nothing written but some ideas, is "The Knight of Lancaster or Something," in which the Arcs trace their line to an old branch of the Vale Royal Family... which has almost no plot significance whatsoever in this romantic comedy short series. The emotional antidote for 'why can't I let Jaune and Ruby have an unreservedly happy relationship?' No real plot, no real drama, but a series of one-shots as Jaune and Ruby subvert or skirt around romance tropes, fanon expectations, and the occasional gender role as they fight over which one of them is really supposed to be the Knight of Lancaster shipping. (Hint- Ruby doesn't see herself as the damsel or lady to be fought for.)

But the next big one- that may never be finished but I've already outlined the whole- is "A hunter or Something." This is my most ambitious story project yet- and has the highest chance of never being finished in light of IRL things in my future- but if it is it will be an honest-to-god adventure. First Arc is already done, and halfway through the second.

Synopsis: Jaune was a hunter. Used a bow, hunted game, never people or Grimm. Not like the arrogant Hunters he wanted nothing to do with. But when his runaway sister asks him to help find her missing teammate, Jaune and Ren will both have to relearn what they thought they knew if they're to survive the Grimm Lands.

-Why won't I ever write 'An Affair or Something'?

Because this story is damn depressing for the vast majority of it, and bittersweet at the end. It's not a crime drama or fantasy-based despair, it's a story of troubles and unhappiness that easily hit far too close to home. It's not the sort of story that appeals to people or would keep much interest, except to the sort of people who enjoy watching a marriage self-destruct in slow motion. Not many people would read a story that goes 'hey, let's start with a broken marriage that gets worse,' and think 'I want me some of that.'

There's an argument to making art for art's own sake- but rarely when it depresses the writer too.

I wrote this summary not-story-story so that I could get it out of my head. I shared it because I thought people might be interested. I'm posting it because I felt the same (and because I was tired of copy-pasting the original draft to people asking.) I think the story design is good- in some ways it's better than Common Criminal- and it's worth remembering if not writing. But getting this out of my head like this was a one-day writing block with a week of back-editing. Trying to write it out would be… weeks, if not months, of effort. Time I wouldn't be spending on writing I would enjoy, or IRL concerns that keep me from writing.

But finally- I'll never write it for sure now because I've already shared the outline. Part of the fun for me in writing fanfiction and posting it over long periods of time is to watch people read, respond, and react to twists and turns over that time. With this public, there's no point- there would be no drama, no question of what's coming next or who Jaune would end up with or how the affair would develop. Spoiler Alert: Ruby gets her Fairy Tale ending, just not in the way she initial expected. Jaune grows up. And Pyrrha is too good a woman to steal Jaune. More at eleven.

So hopefully this is a nice compromise. You get to see and imagine something I never would have written, and in exchange I never have to write it or dwell on it again. Everyone's a winner!

Except Pyrrha. She's forever alone.

(Oum I am such a troll. Don't worry Pyrrha- I wrote a story with a happy ending just for you. Wait or week or two.)


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